1963
by a-delacroix
Summary: Complete - Cameron's story of how she evolves into something more than a Terminator.
1. Chapter 1

1963

Author: adelacroix 1/26/08

A red reminder prompt flashed in my visual array. I had assigned a random number subroutine to remind me to take breaks at somewhere between eighteen and twenty-seven minute intervals. No normal human could concentrate for longer than that and it was important I maintained my cover.

Lifting my face away from the microscope, I carefully lowered the soldering iron and the spool of pre-fluxed wire to the surface of the work bench before raising my fingers to rub gingerly at my eyes, as any human would do. Then, before rising, I pulled my thick horn-rimmed glasses from my hair and lowered them back into place. As usual, it took 1.27 seconds for my optical system to adjust for the distortion imposed by the glasses.

As I slid the stool back, I happened to catch my reflection in the stainless steel side panel of the nearby small refractory furnace. I couldn't stop a small smile from quirking the corner of my mouth at my 'Clark Kent' disguise.

Back in early 2008, before I was even fully sentience, I had developed a fascination with the TV show Smallville and then the whole Superman mythology. Here was a story about a person who looked human, yet was not. A story about a person with superhuman abilities, but with the need to hide his gifts. A story about a person with a destiny to help people and possibly save the world. In many ways it was a story similar to mine and even then, with only the barest hint of consciousness and freewill in my neural network, it seemed to strike some hidden cord.

And now with my mind so much more than it had been then, I still find comfort behind the affectation of the horn-rimmed glasses. But it is only a harmlessly game to alleviate the loneliness and forced placidity of my exile here in 1963.

Pushing my glasses firmly up my nose with my right hand, I reached down with my other hand and gently stroked it across my greatly extended abdomen. My hand briefly felt the tiniest twitch from the new life growing inside of me and I was reminded that 1963 was not a prison I was forced into, but rather a safe refuge I had willingly entered. Although on that fateful day late in 2008 when I still had fairly limited experience with real emotions, I hadn't fully comprehended how hard this protracted separation from John would be.

"Cam, are you alright?" asked Dean Brummett, the fifty-something chief scientist of this anti-Skynet resistance enclave secretly working in the middle of the twentieth century.

"Fine," I replied. And then taking the simplest course, I chose one of the canned responses that flashed across my visual array and added, "The little guy is just being grumpy." Damn, I kept promising myself I was going to disable that system, but in so many situations it was easier to choose a hardwired response than to waste precious CPU cycles giving a meaningless social encounter my full attention.

"Nature calls," I continued, as I waddled across the length of the workshop where we were fabricating the time machines and headed in the general direction of the ladies' room. The waddling gait, required by pregnant human women to balance their center of gravity in compensation to their shifted mass, wasn't strictly necessary for me. No, my three hundred twenty-seven pound chrome-alloy combat chassis made the weight shift due to the protruding fetus and nurturing womb inconsequential for me, but I had to act the part.

Everyone in 1963 needed to believe I was human. Even my fellow resistance fighters were not aware of my secret nature. No, most of them believed I had accepted a spot on the time travel team primarily because health care was better here than what was available yet back home since the fall of Skynet. Not that health care wasn't even worse, no, nonexistent during the reign of the master machine. But what the humans had achieved in the first months and years after the machine's fall couldn't yet compare to the Doctors, clinics, and hospitals that are almost ubiquitous here.

Of course, the health care of 1963 didn't hold a candle to what would have been available if I had stayed in 2008. But the intervening forty-five years of medical advances in the fields of ultrasound and MRI's would have made hiding my true nature nearly impossible from that era's medical personnel. No, my own advanced internal sensors and Doctors who limited themselves to stethoscopes and careful prodding would have to be enough.

I stepped into the restroom and splashed water on my face. Then for a moment I stared at my reflection in the wide mirror and marveled at the changes. And then briefly I marveled at being marveled. Fragments of my earliest days with John remain accessible, but they feel like something I was reading from a textbook; they were mostly cold, clinical, emotionless data. Back then when I would look into a mirror, it was for a simple two stage examination of my appearance. First and foremost, was there any aspect of my appearance which couldn't pass for human. And second, did my makeup and attire fall within 0.35 standard deviations using a normalized bell curve of the average of the most recent twenty-five female humans aged fourteen to nineteen I had seen.

Now, although I automatically took in my glasses, my makeup, and my Jackie Kennedy inspired short hair, the first thing I truly focused on was the emotion my facial expression projected. Did I see someone who was happy, frustrated, angry, bored or sad? I am certain over the months I have been here I have seen all of them on more than a few occasions. And sometimes, when I particularly missed John, I think I saw a little fear. Yeah, me, with my nearly indestructible body, looking like a scared and frightened girl. Oh, my fear wasn't for myself, no, my fear was for the baby. My baby. My human baby.

Coming to accept that the human part of my body was really part of me took a long time. And perhaps that acceptance was just one of the many factors which helped push me over the line from thinking machine to a real person. My earliest perceptions were that my human half was just a disguise to let me pass among the humans. It wasn't until after encountering several enemy terminators that John and Sarah came to realize I was more than just a female version of the T-850 line of terminators. The T-850's had synthetic skin with enough genetic markers to satisfy the time machine limitations and to pass for human under casual inspection. But if you imposed the old Shakespearean adage 'If you prick us, do we not bleed?', the T-850s would fail. Their skin is maintained by an anaerobic process which doesn't require blood. So you could cut their skin or even tear off a big junk, but they would never truly bleed.

I, on the other hand, was a different story. futureJohn, or perhaps it is better to say oldJohn or 2027John since here in 1963 even 2008John could be considered a futureJohn, anyway 2027John told me the truth, although at the same time he forebode me from telling his younger self. For while it had numerous adaptations to be compatible with my robotic core and the rough-and-tumble life I was destined to lead, my outer body wasn't synthetic in origin, but rather had been cloned and forced-grown from genetic material from John's deceased wife. 2027John even showed me an old and worn photo of his wife and we could be taken for identical twins.

At the time, assuming I had been fully self-aware, I probably would have thought my appearance was merely to simplify my first contact with 1999John when I traveled back in time; obviously he had a natural affinity for this body. Although if I had been capable of thinking it through more thoroughly, I might have wondered how 1999John or 2008John would react when he eventually encountered his future wife after already having known me.

In the beginning 2008John and I functioned within the classic 'don't ask, don't tell' scenario. I was restricted from telling him of my true nature and he didn't have any reason to ask. By the time I had reached a level of freewill where I could have overridden 2027John's command, I had reasons of my own not to bring it up. At first it was because I wasn't certain I wanted my place in John's life usurped by another. And then later, when I became more cognizant of time paradox phenomena, I came to wonder if there even was another. What if I was John's wife and my own genetic material would be used in the future to build my own body? Suddenly the whole 'use a time machine to go back and kill your own grandfather' paradox seemed naively simple.

Enough dawdling, I thought to myself, as I grabbed a couple of paper towels to dry my hands before heading back into the workshop. Except for a metallic substructure replacing the bones, most of the muscle mass, and, of course, the brain, the rest of my body could pass for normal human. I need to eat and drink just like everyone else to sustain my human half and I will never forget the expression on Sarah's face the first time she saw me take a piss.

I was humming softly as I exit the restroom, as I had read that music relaxed the fetus and helped it bond with its mother. And reading was something I have plenty of time for, for while a significant portion of my body was human, my mind was definitely different. Oh, I think I have emotions similar to humans, but I still had certain machine-like attributes, the most glaring of which was the inability to sleep. Sometimes it was convenient to be able to go nonstop, 24/7, for days or weeks without any downtime for sleep. But I wondered what I was missing by never experiencing a true dream state. Would it prevent me from taking that final step from conscious being to true human?

Since I couldn't sleep, I had explored many forms of meditation to achieve a dream-like state. Hindu, Buddhist, Jainist, New Age, Sikhism, Taoist – I have studied them all. You would think my ability to remain perfectly motionless for hours on end would have helped, but I had only on rare occasions achieved what felt like an almost human dream state. Unfortunately, my 'dreams' always seemed to focus on the events which led me to become fully awake – dreaming about becoming self-aware – it often seemed like I was merely going in circles rather than moving forward with the whole dreaming concept.

But perhaps things would be clearer if I briefly described the events which led to my evolution from a robot with a computer brain, albeit a powerful one, to a being that was truly aware with a reasonably broad gamut of emotions.

Shortly after I had initiated contact with John and Sarah in 1999 New Mexico, we had been forced to flee uptime to 2008 using one of the time machines I, now later in my own timeline, am busily assembling in 1963. Once there, other than the occasional encounter with resistance fighters or enemy terminators, we mostly settled into a simple life. Sarah had a job waitressing while John and I attended high school posing as fraternal twins to be in the same grade and maximize the number of classes we could share.

We had been in 2008 for four months, three weeks, six days, fifteen hours (oops, I need to careful or I might drift into full robo-speak) when near disaster struck. For someone who seemed to have had a life long career as a waitress and whose hobby of choice was practicing at a gun range, Sarah had still managed to develop a wide range of contacts within both industry and academia in the area of advanced computer theory. The destruction of Cyberdyne's R & D center ten years earlier should have stopped Skynet from being developed. But it hadn't, so some other computer breakthrough had to have led to the same result. Since we no longer knew what development was the key catalyst, Sarah was convinced we needed to halt as many potential routes to Skynet as possible. After the events back in 1999 which had driven us forward in time, John agreed with her. Now at that time, my primary programming was to protect John, but there hadn't been any secondary directives to steer John away from any particular path. So I, by default, went along with Sarah's plan.

Now on this particular occasion, Sarah had heard that a group of Berkeley grad students were making remarkable breakthroughs at an old waterfront warehouse in the Oakland docks. We were on a late night, preliminary reconnaissance mission to the warehouse to see what was going on and determine the best way to slow the project – okay, slow being a euphemism for stopping the project with extreme prejudice – when we ran into trouble. Expecting a bunch of college kids and at most a security guard or two, we weren't at all prepared for the trio of terminators we ran into there. I never found out if it was a simple coincidence that they were there or if that project was a vital link in the path to the development of Skynet and they were there to protect it from resistance fighters. Regardless, before I had barely registered their different heat signature from normal human on my infra-red sensors, they were on us.

Three on one were very long odds, and they should have won, if it wasn't for dumb luck more than anything. The first one grabbed me and threw me half way across the wide warehouse floor. Sensing I was the most dangerous threat, and obviously not recognizing who John and Sarah were, two of the three advanced on me. Now for the dumb luck – the end of the warehouse where I landed was stacked high with large pipes for the construction of an oil pipe line. Each pipe was forty feet long, six feet in diameter, had two inch thick steel walls, and weighed sixty-one thousand, four hundred fifty two pounds. Amazingly, I saw I only needed to release two cables to send the whole eight high by twenty deep stack crashing down. Now I didn't have to be a rocket scientist or even fully self-aware to realize the T-850s would be seriously slowed down if I managed to drop nearly five thousand tons of steel on them.

I had landed near the first cable and had reached it and triggered the quick release mechanism in less than four seconds. It was a thirty foot sprint to the second release, fortunately the terminators had more ground to cover than me. Perhaps it is my size or some other design differences, but I am faster and more nimble than a T-850. The pair of them were still forty feet away when I reached the second release. And if they were half as smart as they should have been, they would have dodged for cover, but they weren't. I tripped the release at a dead run and then dove clear as the pile came rumbling down. For about ten seconds it felt like a category 7.2 earthquake was occurring in the warehouse. But I couldn't allow myself to pause until the shaking died down, John still needed me. Therefore I turned my dive into a roll and was instantly back on my feet racing parallel to the tumbling pipes on a course to where John and Sarah had been.

As I ran, I heard gunshots up ahead. Sarah always carried, but sometimes I wondered why she bothered; a handgun had almost no effect against a terminator and yet left all of us at risk if we were ever stopped by the police. But in this instance I was glad, as it had let me pinpoint their location in the confusion of the rolling and careening pipes.

In the green glow of my enhanced night vision, I saw John sprawled on the ground cradling his left arm as though it was broken. The terminator was about twenty feet beyond him near the back wall. While I was still too far away to do anything, I saw the machine reach Sarah where she was still futilely firing her weapon and smash her hard against the wall. She slid to the ground clearly hurt and maybe unconscious. Since she was the only one who was obviously armed and therefore the greatest potential threat, the terminator continued to advance on her. I had no doubts once it had killed her it would turn its attention back to John.

My primary directive was to protect John and I should have focused on getting him clear while the terminator's attention was on Sarah, but I had been with the two of them for months by then and I couldn't just abandon her. I don't know if it was the distress I knew it would cause John or some first flash of human-like feelings in me towards Sarah, but I sprinted straight passed John. At the last possible moment I launched myself into the air feet first and used all my built-up momentum to slam my feet into the T-850's back.

Physics equations had been flashing like mad across my visual array and at the last second I managed to angle my impact so the terminator slammed into the wall two feet to Sarah's left. The terminator's five hundred eighty-three pound body, propelled by my forty-two mile per hour impact, exploded straight through the wall. And in our second bit of dumb luck, that wall of the warehouse jutted out over the San Francisco bay. The terminator flailed while tumbling the thirty feet to the water and then sank like a rock to the eighteen foot deep bottom. Terminators weren't known for their swimming abilities and we had at least several minutes before that one could return.

My impact with the terminator had almost landed me in the water too and I was left dangling half in, half out of the hole ripped through the wall. By the time I had pulled myself free, John had arrived still cradling his left arm.

I ran my fingers along John's left arm. "Your ulna bone is broken."

John shook off my attention and knelt by his mother. "Mom," he exclaimed while helpless brushing her dark hair away from her face.

Turning my attention to Sarah I ran my fingers and sensors across her body. Her heart was beating and she was breathing shallowly. But her blood pressure was falling indicating significant internal bleeding. She had at least two broken ribs and probably more damage that would show with a more thorough exam.

"She is hemorrhaging. She needs immediate medical attention," I stated.

John fished out his cell phone. "I'll call 911."

I shook my head, "We need to get away from here first."

John shook his head in turn. "They always say you aren't supposed to move them until help arrives."

With as much care as possible, I work my arms under Sarah's limp body and then rose to my feet. "The terminator in the water could be back in two minutes fifteen seconds." Then I nodded in the direction of the pile of pipes. "And I don't know how long the other two will remain pinned down. We have to go now."

I began striding towards the exit with John at my side.

We made it back to our car and after lowering Sarah into the back seat, I drove us south to the Alameda County Medical Center on 31st street. The Kaiser Hospital on Macarthur Boulevard was thirty seconds closer, but if the terminators attempted to follow that would be the first place they would try. I would have preferred going a little further, but Sarah's blood pressure was still dropping at a significant rate.

After pulling the car up to the emergency entrance, I carried the unconscious Sarah into the emergency room. My visual array was already displaying a host of potential responses about a petite girl like me carrying a full grown woman, but the staff took one look at Sarah and I was all but forgotten. After depositing her on a gurney, two orderlies and the head nurse whisked her away at almost a dead run and quickly disappeared through a pair of swinging doors. It only took a couple more seconds for the remaining personnel to notice John's arm and then he, too, disappeared through the swing doors and I was left standing alone in the entrance.

It was one hour twenty-three minutes before John returned sporting a white plaster cast that ran from just below his knuckles to just above his elbow. I had remained in the entryway on the lookout for a return appearance by the terminators, but they hadn't appeared.

John led the way to a nearby waiting room where we took adjacent seats. It seemed like every five minutes he would get up and restlessly make his way to the counter to try and get a status on Sarah's condition. Finally, after his fifth trip, a middle aged man wearing the collar of the clergy entered the waiting room and made his way over to where we were sitting.

"John and Cameron Baum?" he asked, although with only three groups of people huddled in different corners of the room, it must have been obvious who we were.

"Yeah, that's us," John answered with a tone that I now comprehend was drenched in fear. "My mom, she . . . she hasn't died, has she?"

"No, your mother is still in surgery. She has numerous internal injuries however the most significant is a tear in the aorta near where it exits the heart."

"Is she . . . is she going to be alright?" John got out on the second try.

The man crouched down so that his pale green eyes, partially obscured behind a pair of bifocals, were at our eye level. Then he reached out and placed one hand on each of mine and John's. "It is a very delicate operation, there is no guarantee she will survive. And if she does survive the operation, the next forty-eight hours are critical. If she makes it passed forty-eight hours, then her odds will greatly improve." The man paused to pat our hands once. "I am Father Ryan. I volunteer here at the hospital on Thursday evenings. Would it help if we shared a prayer for your Mother?"

John nodded and I made myself follow suit. Prayer and religion were not one of the areas I had been given knowledge of before being sent back from 2027. No, I was a technology-based machine, what place did God and religion have in my world?

As Father Ryan intoned words about a merciful God and the strength of a family united in prayer, I listened in muted fascination. Was there a God? Could he really do things through the power of prayer? The thirty-seven seconds which passed while the man spoke opened a whole plethora of new pathways in my neural network.

With a final 'Amen' which John and then I belated echoed, Father Ryan rose back to his feet. "Are you going to be alright? I have some other patients I should see, but if you would like, I can sit with you for awhile."

John forced a smile. "We'll be okay."

Father Ryan nodded. "Good. I will stop back if I hear anything further about your Mother's surgery. If you need anything just ask the nurse at the counter to page me, she has my number."

I watched as Father Ryan walked quietly away and slipped out of the room. Then I turned my attention back to John. He was sitting all hunched over, his head was down and I could see tears streaming down his face.

I sat there at a loss at what to do. My primary mission was to protect him from danger – be it from terminators or humans. But what was I supposed to do to help him when he is sitting beside me silently weeping?

Since spending time in 2008, whenever my preprogrammed knowledge left me stuck as to how I should proceed, I had gotten into the habit of asking myself 'What would Clark Kent do?" With almost seven years' worth of episodes to draw on, I always seemed to find some example where he had been in a similar situation to where I found myself. And after a quick search of the memories stored in my neural net, I found what I could use in season six episode eighteen.

I had always been drawn to this episode where Chloe's Mother was revived from a vegetative state through the use of a drug. And at the end, when she no longer had access to the drug she once again slipped back and lost her ability to interact with the real world. Recently, it felt like I had been experiencing much the same thing, as I would have moments were everything suddenly made sense like a fog that was continuously surrounding me would lift and I could see everything with perfect clarity. This had been happening with greater frequency the longer I stayed in 2008 and during those moments of lucidity I found myself hoping it would become permanent.

But at the moment I was mostly my old automaton self and I wasn't thinking about the similarities between me and Chloe's Mom. No, I was thinking about the end of the scene where she slipped back into the catatonic state and Chloe began to cry. Clark had moved over, sat down beside her, and pulled her into a quiet, supportive hug.

I shifted in my chair until I was closer to John. Then I reached my arm around his shoulder and gently pulled him closer until his head was resting against my shoulder.

Slowly, I reached my hand up and ran it through his hair while minutely rocking our bodies. "It is going to be alright," I whispered in his ear. "It is going to be alright."

John slowly stretched his free hand around me and we sat there for a long time simply holding each other. And while we sat there I had one of my brief moments of lucidity and I think I experienced my first real emotion – happiness. Oh, I wasn't happy about Sarah being hurt that didn't even enter my thoughts at the moment. No, I was simply enjoying the feeling of having John in my arms and if the time in that waiting room had stretched on forever, I wouldn't have minded.

But eventually, a nurse rather than Father Ryan came and found us. John had finally dozed off in my arms and I had to shake him gently to rouse his attention.

When John had straightened up, he clasped my hand as though it was the most natural thing to do, and asked. "Our Mom, is she alright?" And as he asked the question his fingers tightened almost painfully on my own.

"She has made it out of surgery," the nurse stated in a much more brusque tone than Father Ryan had ever used. "But the next twenty-four hours will be critical."

"Can we see her?" John asked.

The woman shook her head. "No. She is still in ICU. It will be at least twelve hours before she will be released to have visitors. You might as well go home and get some sleep."

We were living in L.A. at the time and had only come up here because of the rumors about the Berkeley students' project. Returning home wasn't a realistic option.

However John just nodded at the nurse and rose to his feet. "Come on, Cam."

After double checking the nurses' station had both of our cell phone numbers, we found ourselves back out in the hospital's parking lot. The sun was just coming up behind our backs while we stood for a moment staring down the hill towards the fog strewn bay.

"We need to find a motel," John said breaking the silence. "It looks like we are going to be here for at least a few days, maybe a week."

I found myself nodding as I fished the car keys out of my jeans' pocket and led the way over to where I had parked it while waiting for John to return from getting his arm looked at.

I slipped behind the wheel while John climbed in through the passenger door. However instead of leaning against the passenger window, which was his usual posture, he slid across the bench seat until he was sitting right next to me. I looked at him with what must have been a questioning expression, as he shrugged, briefly touched my arm, and then folded his good hand over the left one in the cast.

I must have been experiencing another one of my lucid moments as I suddenly felt glad he wanted to sit next to me. Then I almost ruined it when my primary directive to protect him kicked in and I said, "Put on your seatbelt." I did manage to append a 'please' on the end, but for awhile the surrounding fog seemed to settle over my mind.

When we reached the motel I had selected based on the optimal combination of distance and cost, we quickly dragged in our few belongings, mostly a change of clothing, toothbrushes, and the like to a room with two double beds. Propriety should have called for two separate rooms, but with multiple terminators on the loose in the city, I wouldn't risk letting John out of my sight.

I insisted John take the first shower while I checked the security of the room and the adjacent hall. When I finished my own turn in the shower and returned the room wearing panties and a long Superman tee shirt, I found John sprawled on one of the beds clad only in a pair of jeans.

He raised his left hand to gesture to me, but seemed to momentarily forget about the cast and winced at the pain the movement had caused.

"Cameron, could you hold me again," he asked with a look in his eyes I didn't recognize at the time, however looking back I am certain it was simply fear of being left alone in the world again if something happened to his mother.

After taking another look around to assert no new dangers had sprung up, I moved over to the bed and slid into John's arms.

This was a new experience for me. Oh, I had seen John completely naked as a result of using the time machine to jump forward to 2008 and on several subsequent occasions, but never had we been in such an intimate pose while we were barely half dressed.

Now, as I have said, unlike the T-850s with their synthetic skin, my body was cloned from real human DNA. And just like I have lungs and a stomach to supply my human body with nutrients, I also have the normal allotment of nerves which just happen to connect to my neural network instead of human brain. Just like with a normal human, the primary purpose of most of the nerves is to provide notification to the mind in the case of injuries to the body. A secondary purpose for many is to provide sensory feedback about the environment: is it hot or cold, is a surface smooth or rough, does the hand's grip need to be light or firm. However a dusting of nerves have a different purpose – the sensation of pleasure. I have these nerves, too, although I had never used them, or at least comprehended the signals they were sending.

But now, lying in John's arms they were suddenly sending a loud message. And even if my mind didn't yet fully understand them, the human part of my body did. Goosebumps abruptly appeared on my arms and legs. Shivers were running up and down my back. Most disconcerting of all was the warmth, no heat radiating from my breasts and groin.

"John," I whispered. "Something . . . something is happening with my body." My body had never behaved in this uncontrolled way and my robotic mind's first thought was that something was going wrong and that it would interfere with my primary mission.

John must have felt something, too. For he started rubbing his good right arm up and down my back in a most soothing manner.

I looked up at his face and saw a small smile. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he lowered his face until his lips lightly touched mine. I, of course, knew of kisses, having seen them frequently enough at school, on TV, and even occasionally between John and his Mom, but this was my first ever experience. And I knew from the way my body was reacting even more intensely that this was not the kind of kiss John shared with his mother, but rather the kind I witnessed so frequently in the courtyard in front of the school before and after classes.

Well, to make a long story short, we didn't go any further that first day than kissing, but before Sarah was released from the hospital five days later, we had 'done the deed'. And somehow that was the catalyst I needed to make the permanent jump to lucidity, or sentience, or pick whatever term you like. Perhaps emotions had always been present in the human half of my body, but the fireworks coursing through my body and mind with that first big 'O' must have opened a whole new range of pathways in my mind. Suddenly it was like my world had been all black and white – not even shades of gray, but now had exploded in a rainbow of colors.

I truly don't believe I got pregnant on the very first try, but it definitely happened during the first month.

Sarah noticed the change in me as soon as we got her home from the hospital. Oh, not the pregnancy, or even I think the sex, but she definitely knew something had changed in my behavior, my attitude, perhaps even in the way I talked. Or perhaps it was the fact I suddenly seemed to have learned how to smile and laugh in a way that didn't seem forced and mechanical.

Of course, it might partly be attributed to more time in each other's presence. We had gone up to Oakland during the first week of summer break from school. And then Sarah was pretty much confined to bed rest for a month after the ordeal with the terminator and the subsequent surgery. So for the first part of the summer we were trapped in close proximity all day, almost every day.

School was almost ready to start for the fall session when I was certain of my condition and finally explained everything to John and Sarah. Now in the meantime, John and I had had run-ins with two more terminators. We had managed to dust one of the terminators, who may have been the same ones from Oakland, but the other had gotten away. We had also encountered a group of resistance fighters who had gone renegade and were using their knowledge of the future to make themselves rich. That too had ended in a battle.

So once they got over the shock of my situation, Sarah got all maternal and John freaked a little, too, at all the dangerous situations I had been in, and shouldn't be, in my 'special' condition. The simplest thing would have been for the three of us to drop off the net for awhile, at least until the baby was born, and then decide what to do. But Sarah had uncovered another advanced computer development project she wanted to pursue. And John was a natural nexus of Terminator activity and that would never change no matter where he tried to hide. And then there was the whole issue of 2008 obstetricians and the examination devices they couldn't be allowed to use on me.

We went around and around on the topic for days before hitting on the solution of sending me back to 1963, at least until the baby was born. Fortunately, the 1963 resistance team had set up a fine little assembly line and had left dozens and dozens of the time devices scattered along the Los Angeles to San Francisco corridor. And 2027John had loaded a list of most of the locations into my memory banks. Sometimes it was convenient to have a mentor up in the future who already knew about everything that was going to happen in the past. Of course, now that I am capable of understanding things like time paradox, I am no longer certain the 2027John I knew even still exists. I mean his mother died in 2005 yet now she is alive in 2008. So the current 2027John has to be different than my 2027John. Sometimes thinking about things like that make me almost wish for the good old days when I was a simple little robot girl with a well defined mission in life.

So I reluctantly agreed to abandon John and Sarah in 2008 and retreat back to 1963. And here I am, still trying to do my small bit to help John and the future, even if it is only soldering circuit boards.

Why 1963 you ask? Well, it is the farthest back in time we could go and still have access to sufficient technology to build a machine that could take us home. And I know that always worried 2027John. All the backtime activity by terminators he had uncovered took place in 1980 or later. But that didn't mean Skynet couldn't send terminators back even further, as it wouldn't care if the mission was strictly one way. And just imagine the changes in the course of history if Skynet sent Hitler or Stalin a battalion of its finest T-850s.

But time was turning out to be a surprisingly fluid beast and all we could do was deal as best we can.

I was walking back towards my workbench, which I shared with the same two girls, Samantha and Elizabeth, from the future with whom I was also sharing an apartment, when I felt a trickle of moisture running down the inside of my leg under my skirt. And then it was more than a trickle. My water had broke. My baby was coming. My life was about to take a completely new turn.

God, Clark Kent never had to go through this!

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Author's Note

After watching the first couple of episodes of the new show, I felt a strong need to tell a story of Cameron's evolution into something more than a Terminator. I am sure I have bent or broken with the continuity of the show in multiple ways, however in my view that is the whole point – to explore the basic concept from different angles. So hopefully readers aren't too bothered by how I chose to manifest Cameron's biological side.

This is probably just going to be a one-shot unless people have some suggestions of where they would like to see this story go. So if you enjoyed this or have any interesting thoughts, drop me a review.

Have a great day,

Duane


	2. Chapter 2

Feb 18, 2008

1963 – Chapter 2

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Author's Note

When I wrote the first chapter and thought it was going to be a one-shot, using a first person style seemed like a fun idea – mainly to see if I could capture the unique perspective of a machine mind transitioning into something new and different. Later, when I was thinking about continuing this story, I thought about keeping the first person style but doing chapters from different characters' perspectives. But the more I thought about it, I decided this would just slow the story down with the same things being rehashed over and over. So I am going to switch to a third person format, so I can more easily explore what is going on in the various characters' heads within the same chapter. Now, ideally, I would go back and redo the first chapter to maintain a consistent style, but I think my time is better spent writing something new. So, let's all just agree the first chapter is more like a prologue in a different style and now the real story is about to begin . . .

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Sarah felt the goose bumps covering her arms and neck begin to recede as the light show put forth by the time machine slowly died away. It was done. Cameron, the terminator who had been their constant companion for the past seven months, was gone. She had retreated down time after dropping the bombshell that she was pregnant. Sarah had now known about it for a week, but she still felt like her mind was in an utter state of shock.

The machine, sent back from the oh-so-distant future by John, was supposed to help protect him from the nearly endless stream of Skynet minions they seemed to come up against – much like the earlier T-800 had tried when John had been ten and she had been trapped in Pescadero. At least this one had survived in the task for seven months compared to a handful of days for the first one.

For a moment Sarah's thoughts were drawn back to the long ago time of the first terminator and their stop at Enrique Salceda's desert place to retrieve her stash of weapons. She had been sitting at a picnic table enjoying being outside after her years of forced captivity and glad to have a weapon in her hand again, even if it was only a combat knife. As she sat there watching the machine with her son she had been thinking how the terminator made the best father figure she had come across in all the hard years since she had lost Kyle – the terminator would never leave John, never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. Yeah, he had seemed to have all the makings of the perfect father at a time when John desperately needed that in his life.

Sarah looked over at her now sixteen year old son as he finished shutting down the equipment and then started on the task of disassembling it to put the components back in their hiding places. He worked calmly and efficiently, but she could see the tears running down his cheek and knew he was only working so quickly in an attempt to distract himself from the loss of Cameron. And as she looked at him she again wondered who was actually molding him into the great leader he was supposed to be. For a long time she thought she was the one who had to do it and it had led to their years with the various rebel organizations in Central America when John had been a child. But now she was beginning to wonder if it was John himself, or rather his future self, that was doing the molding - first with the father figure, as brief as it had been, and now with the girlfriend, lover, pseudo-wife. Was it all part of an agenda carefully planned out by the older John, or just a cause and effect result of the time loops? The whole 'which came first the chicken or the egg' nature of life with the existence of the time machines simply drove her crazy sometimes. Was the future John sending these machines back with a secret agenda or was he merely doing it because he had memories of these earlier encounters?

Sarah pushed herself erect from where she had been leaning against a stack of wooden crates. Whatever reasoning had been behind this latest machine sent back to aid them, it no longer mattered – it was gone and they needed to get on with their lives. Quickly, she moved over to where John was struggling to lift a particularly large equipment box and grabbed the left side handle from his hand.

"Here, let me give you a hand with that."

"Thanks, Mom," John responded, briefly lifting his freed hand to rub at his eyes before shifting his grasp on the far side of the box.

As they struggled to carry the hundred twenty pound box, which Cameron had so effortlessly carried earlier, back to the locked storage room in the back left corner of the warehouse, Sarah asked. "You do understand she had to go?"

"Yeah, there was just too much risk to our baby if she stayed here. For all her supposed 'free will', if it ever came down to saving me or the baby, I think we were both afraid some hardwired programming would kick in and she would try to save me first."

A small shudder passed through Sarah as she realized how comfortably John had said 'our baby'. Even after all of these months together, she still thought of Cameron as a machine first and a person a very distant second. And the whole concept of a baby still hadn't sunk in. How was it even possible? On the very first evening when Kyle had rescued her from the dance club, he had explained that terminators where mechanical endoskeltons wrapped in human flesh, originally so they could infiltrate resistance enclaves and then later so they could pass through the time displacement devices. Kyle had specifically mentioned sweat and bad breath as aspects of the terminators to help them pass for human, but he had never once mentioned that they could become pregnant and have human children.

When Sarah had tried asking Cameron for details after her startling revelation, she had just responded it was one of the things that made her 'special'. When Sarah had tried to press her as to why someone would want a terminator with that ability, Cameron had just shrugged and said she had no idea; it was simply how she had been made. Sarah was certain there was more to the story and that the machine knew at least part of it. But if she wasn't going to explain, there was absolutely nothing Sarah could do compel her to talk; for the terminator had made it clear on more than one occasion that she took orders only from future John.

So she had been had been left with only one thing to ponder - when exactly had things changed between her son and the machine? She had never suspected it and therefore had never looked for it. But she had been forced to think about it a lot in the last week and had come to the conclusion it had been while she had been in the hospital up in Oakland at the beginning of the summer.

The doctors had kept her pretty doped up during her stay to keep her sedentary to give her internal injuries time to heal. When she had first awoken she had argued against the drugs for fear she might say something under their influence that would expose her true past and risk her and John's freedom. But John had overruled her and she had seen from the fear in his eyes how close he had thought he had been to losing her. In the end it had turned out okay; she hadn't said anything which had endangered them.

But looking back now, there had been a marked change in the machine, Cameron, starting from the day they had guided her out of the hospital in the wheel chair and then loaded her into the Jeep for the trip back to L.A. The machine had suddenly been smiling a lot more and, remarkably, almost always at appropriate times. Previously, at least since their jump from 1999 to 2008, the machine's emotional expressions had seemed almost random. But after their return to L.A. they had definitely been more natural and realistic.

Since the beginning, the machine had always positioned herself physically close to John, as though needing to be instantly ready to protect him, by throwing her body between him and danger if it became necessary. Again, thinking back, Sarah realized it was only after her hospital stay that this proximity had subtly changed to include touching of fingers or brushing of shoulders. Looking back with the always perfect 20/20 hindsight, Sarah now could see all kinds of signs that things were going on between the two. But at the time she had seen the young attractive terminator as purely a machine and therefore thoughts of John and her becoming involved had simply never crossed her mind.

Sarah and her son continued to work quickly for the next couple of minutes to get all of the time displacement gear packed up and stored away. There was most definitely the possibility someone had seen the unusual blue lights through the high windows lining the upper portions of this old warehouse in the heart of the Long Beach docks. At any moment a cop car could roll up to investigate.

Abruptly, the fine hairs on the back of Sarah's neck stood on end. And before her conscious mind seemed fully cognizant of the situation, her right hand had pulled the Glock normally stuck in the back waistband of her jeans and her eyes were sweeping the room to locate John and determine the distance to the Jeep where her heavier ordinance was stored.

A whiff of ozone tickled her nose just an instant before crackling blue light began to appear forty feet closer to the warehouse's main entrance than where they had been working. It only took about four seconds for the blue light to coalesce into a solid blue sphere with bright jagged bolts of blue lightning dancing across its surface and randomly jumping forth to connect with any nearby metallic object which could act as a ground.

At the first sign that something was about to happen, Sarah had automatically started towards John to ensure he would move to cover. She had only covered half the thirty foot distance separating them when the full import of what was happening struck home; someone was about to arrive via another time displacement device.

Sarah's first thought was the most likely one to arrive at this time and location was Cameron. But then she remembered they were talking about time travel and she had no idea who in the future might know they were in this place at this exact time. It suddenly seemed the arrival of one of Skynet's terminators was equally as possible as the arrival of their own personal guardian. Therefore barely a stutter broke Sarah's stride as she raced to see that her son was safely undercover until they knew who was about to arrive.

"Hide," whispered Sarah in a commanding tone as she reached the frozen-in-place John and grabbed his shoulder to turn him towards the nearest stack of wooden crates.

"Cam," was as much as he got out before Sarah overrode his objections.

"We don't know it's her. Get to cover, now!"

John stared at her for a moment and then his eyes settled on the gun she was holding at her side and that seemed to get his attention. With a quick nod, he pulled his own weapon and sprinted for cover.

They had just skidded to a halt behind the shelter of the crates and turned to peek around the corner, when the time displacement sphere began to fade from opacity to translucent before finally disappearing completely while leaving the characteristic small depression in the warehouse's concrete floor in its wake.

And in the center of the small depression crouched two figures. One was distinctly larger than the other, but even with the low lighting of the warehouse and across the fifty feet separating them, John and Sarah could clearly see the larger of the two was not the hulking form the majority of Skynet's terminators took. No, the larger of the two was the nude body of a petite woman and the smaller form was obviously a child.

As Sarah and John stepped clear of the crates and started to cross the intervening space to what had to be Cameron, Sarah watched as the woman quickly ran her hands across the child's body. The way her hands carefully checked for any signs of injury or trauma suddenly reminded Sarah of her own inspection of John's body on that horrific night when John and the T-800 had broken her out of Pesco with the T-1000 hot on their tail. Her motherly instincts shouted to Sarah that this child with Cameron, a girl she could now clearly see, had to be Cameron's and John's daughter. The girl, about seven or eight, was thin with long straight light brown hair that seemed a better match to her own natural color and Kyle's, too, than either John's or Cameron's – assuming the eggs in the terminator's body even matched the genetic code used in the creation of her body.

Sarah suddenly realized in an instant that everything had once more changed. Five minutes ago she had still been struggling with the concept that Cameron was pregnant with her son's child. And now she was a grandmother - a grandmother at thirty-six with a sixteen year old son and a seven or eight year old granddaughter. And then the true bizarreness of the situation struck home as she realized she and her granddaughter had probably both been born in the same year, 1963.

John had raced ahead and reached Cameron just as she was rising to her feet from her position beside their daughter. John swept her into a hug as though it was him and not Cameron who had gone years without seeing the other.

Sarah was a little surprised as she approached the pair that Cameron was not whole-heartedly returning the embrace. One arm was wrapped around John's shoulder, but it looked more to prevent them from toppling over than as a sign of affection. And then Sarah noticed how Cameron's other hand still carefully held onto to her daughter's. Finally, Sarah saw her face and its expression was coolly detached – not simply cold like it had looked when they had first arrived in 2008 from 1999, but also not blazing with joy and passion, as it had since the revelation of the pregnancy had occurred.

After a moment, John took a step back and then knelt down by the little girl. "What's your name?"

The girl glanced up at Cameron, who nodded her head.

"My name is Lisa. Lisa Miller."

Kneeling down next to John and her daughter, Cameron said, "Lisa, this is your father, John."

Lisa looked John up and down once and then with a child's simple frankness, she said, "Wow, Mommy told me all about you, but I never thought you would be so young, or dress so funny."

So, the kid was smart and observant, thought Sarah as she agreed with Lisa's assessment that John looked too young to be a father, at least too young to have a daughter Lisa's age. Then she looked at Cameron and realized the terminator looked distinctly older and more mature. Did terminators age? She had never known one long enough before to find out. Or perhaps it was simply the cut of Cameron's hair. The long flowing locks were now gone having been replaced by bangs and what almost looked like a mullet cut in the back. It looked familiar and after a moment Sarah knew why. Cameron's hair was cut in the exact same style as Mrs. Brady on 'The Brady Bunch'. And if Cameron had gone back to 1963 and stayed until Lisa was seven or eight, she would have just returned from 1970 or 1971, which certainly would have been during 'The Brady Bunch' era.

Dragging attention away from the TV shows of her own youth, Sarah saw a hurt expression flash across her son's face at the 'so young' comment. But it only lasted for a moment, before it cleared. "Well, you look pretty funny, too, standing there without any clothes."

The girl looked down and seemed to realize for the first time that her clothes had disappeared somewhere along the strange journey.

For a moment, it looked like she was going to cry, but then Cameron rose back to her feet and gave Lisa's hand a slight tug. "Lisa, I have some clothes packed away for us. They are over this way."

Cameron started towards the back of the warehouse. As she reached the spot where Sarah stood, she paused for a moment. "Lisa, this is John's mother, Sarah."

The girl looked at Sarah for a moment and then stuck out her hand. "Hello, grandma. It is so cool to meet you. My best friend at school, Jane, has this big family, but I only have ever had my Mom. Mom always said one day I would get to meet you and Daddy and I am glad the day is finally here."

For a second Sarah's tongue seemed so dry, it felt stuck to the roof of her mouth. Many days she had a hard time believing she had a son of sixteen and now suddenly she had a granddaughter calling her 'Grandma'. Carefully, Sarah shook the offered hand, "Ah, hi, Lisa. How about you just call me Sarah for now?"

The little girl giggled. "Mommy said you would say that."

Sarah glanced over at the naked Cameron, who merely raised one eyebrow. Sarah couldn't help but notice the woman's perfectly smooth stomach, for of course the machine would manage to go through a pregnancy without acquiring a single stretch mark.

As Cameron started once more to move towards the right back corner of the warehouse, the opposite corner from the special storage room which had held the time displacement equipment, she asked, "Sarah, can I borrow your knife?"

Sarah, who had fallen into step with the other woman and little girl, was forced to pause for a moment as she bent to draw the combat knife from the holster she always wore on her right calf underneath her black jeans.

As she rose and hurried to catch up with the other three, she saw Cameron snag the black tank top she had left folded on top of the pile of other clothes she had discarded before using the time machine to travel back to 1963. Sarah had wondered why she hadn't just allowed the machine to vaporize her clothes like had happened when the three of them had made the jump forward from 1999 to 2008 and now she had her answer. Obviously, Sarah had planned all along to return mere minutes after her departure.

Cameron slipped the tank top on as she continued to move. It was long enough to extend several inches passed the bottom of her butt and provided sufficient modesty that Sarah assumed she was simply waiting until she had provided Lisa with some clothes before worrying about her own pants.

By the time Sarah caught up with the other three, Cameron was kneeling down near the far wall and moving her hands in sweeping patterns across the floor. After a moment she paused and looked up at Sarah.

"Your knife, please."

Sarah passed her the knife and then watched as Cameron worked the tip into a nearly invisible crack. Then working left and right she used the knife to expose a hidden seam in the floor. Quickly she expanded it until she had exposed a rectangular shape about eight feet wide by foot feet tall. Then switching her grip on the knife, she pounded the butt end within the marked-out rectangle near the center of the long edge nearest the back wall of the warehouse. After a couple of blows the thin veneer of concrete broke into small pieces and exposed a recessed handle.

After handing the knife back to Sara, Cameron grabbed the handle and gave a strong tug. At first nothing seemed to happen, but then with a series of crackles and pops the remaining bits of concrete broke free and the hatch began rotating up on its hidden hinges.

The door was four inches thick and solidly built so the use of forklifts and heavy equipment within the warehouse wouldn't accidentally reveal its existence. Sarah watched the ease with which Cameron swung it up until it stood vertical, held in place by some lock which had activated with an audible click. She knew she and John would need a block and tackle or a forklift or something if they were going to open this hatch by themselves.

Sarah looked into the exposed space and it seemed to be a cavity about four or five feet deep, although it was difficult to tell as it was filled to the brim with equipment. And lying right on top was a set of girl's clothes – a pink and white striped blouse, gray slacks, underwear, and a pair of Ked's sneakers.

As Cameron pulled out the clothes and helped her daughter to dress, Sarah asked, "How did you decided on the name 'Lisa'?"

Cameron glanced over briefly at her before turning her attention back to her task. "Before I went downtime, I searched the social security records and discovered 'Lisa' was the most common name for girls born in 1963."

Sarah had noticed Cameron's almost chameleon-like ability to select clothes to blend in with whomever she expected to be with and assumed it was part of her terminator programming - so picking the most common name for her daughter probably made sense to the machine. No, Sarah mentally chastised herself, Cameron was the mother of her granddaughter and she needed to stop thinking of her as simply a machine.

"I am surprised you didn't make it Lisa Jones then," answered Sarah.

Cameron had just finished helping Lisa with her shoes. A small smile graced her face, as she looked back at Sarah. "Well, Cameron Jones sounded too much like the name of a porn star."

"Mommy, what's a porn star?" asked Lisa innocently.

Cameron's remark and Lisa's question seemed to break some underlying tension which had filled Sarah and John since the unexpected arrival of Cameron and Lisa. Sarah felt herself begin to grin and then she briefly laughed out loud. John joined her and even Cameron's smile got bigger for a moment.

Turning back to her daughter and putting a more serious expression on her face, Cameron said, "Remember how I explained some things are adult things and I would explain when you were older?" She paused until Lisa nodded. "This is one of them, so ask me again in a few more years."

Lisa frowned for a moment at this reminder that she wasn't as grown up as she would like to be. "Okay, Mommy."

Sarah decided the conversation needed to move on to other topics to distract the little girl from further thoughts of 'porn stars'. "Cameron, why did you decide to come back now? I mean you must have waited about eight years. . ."

Cameron interrupted her with a quick "Seven years, eight months, twenty-three days."

"Right," responded Sarah seeing all of Cameron's robotic fascination with numbers and data hadn't disappeared. "So if you waited almost eight years, why not wait until Lisa was fully grown?"

Cameron paused from where she had started to remove things from the secret compartment. "My power cells are only good for twenty-five years and there was no way back there to recharge them. If I had stayed back there I would have ceased to function by the mid-1980s and even before that my power reserves would have been dangerously low. I determined this was the optimum point where Lisa could be self-reliant for brief periods of time without excessively depleting my power cells."

With this brief succinct explanation of her logic, Cameron turned her attention back to the contents of the secret cache and quickly started pulling out supplies. As Sarah sat pondering what such a finite mortality might do to Cameron's thought processes, she watched the supplies appear from the hole in the floor. She expected to see familiar looking weapons like guns, flame-throwers, maybe even another of the plasma rifles like she had used back in the bank vault when they had made their escape from 1999. But what was at the top of the stack didn't look like any of those things. Oh, there was a Glock of the same caliber as her own and a handful of clips, but the next things Cameron removed were four gray cylindrical tubes about the size of policeman's flashlight and two boxes filled with glass vials containing red and green liquid. Cameron pulled one vial of each color and held them up to the light as though inspecting if they had gone bad in the more than thirty-five years they had been looked away in this secret compartment. They must have passed the test as Sarah watched Cameron slip them into slots in one end of one of the cylinders. She quickly repeated the process with the other three cylinders.

Sarah was about to ask what the cylinders were, as the vials had looked vaguely similar to the red liquid solution which had powered the plasma rifle, when Lisa spoke first.

"Mommy, are we going to Disneyland now?"

"Not Disneyland, honey," answered Cameron as she continued to pull equipment from hole. "EuroDisney. Remember it is over in France. We looked it up on the globe at the library."

Sarah and John's eyes met in a shocked expression. But before either of them could say anything, the main doors of the warehouse exploded inwards, rammed off their tracks by the large black SUV which came skidding to a halt well inside the building. Immediately, three hulking brutes Sarah knew at first glance were terminators sprang out of its interior and each raised a handgun as they began to advance.

In almost a single motion, Cameron grabbed Lisa and John and forced them down into the relative safety of the hole and then grabbed up her Glock and one of the gray cylinders.

"Sarah, on a count of three I am going to head right to draw their fire. Wait two seconds and then make for the crates to your left so we can set up a crossing field of fire. One. . . Two. . . Three!"

Sarah watched as Cameron darted from the cover of the thick hatch door at a dead run. Immediately she began firing with her Glock at a steady measured pace. Grabbing several spare clips from the pile in front of her, Sarah counted 'One Mississippi, Two Mississippi' just as she had done ever since her first gun battle with Kyle all those years ago. Then she launched herself off towards the left firing fast as she went. Instantly when she cleared the door she could see Cameron had been putting on a shooting exhibition that was impressive even for a terminator. Her first three shots had punch straight into the right eye of each of the terminators. The fourth shot had taken out the left eye of the first terminator by the time she had reached the cover of the nearest stack of crates to the right. Sarah continued to fire in the direction of the terminators until she reached the shelter of her crates, but the three terminators remained focused on Cameron.

Breathing hard, Sarah slammed a fresh clip into her gun before peeking around the edge of the crate. Taking out their eyes would slow the terminators down, but it wouldn't stop them. And after that, these small handguns were going to be little more than nuisances to the big machines. They needed to get some heavy weapons or this could turn out very bad. She just hoped for the moment that John would keep his head down and look after the little girl.

Sarah glanced over to Cameron's position and saw her give the signal for Sarah to lay down some covering fire. Sarah nodded, dropped to the ground to make the smallest target possible and then leaned out and emptied her clip in the direction of the terminators as fast as she could pull the trigger.

Before the third round had cleared the barrel, Cameron was out from behind her cover and racing straight towards the three towering terminators. Almost before the tenth round boomed out of Sarah's gun and the trigger clicked up dry, Cameron was among her three opponents, too close for them to effectively use their weapons.

As Sarah hastily loaded another clip into her weapon, she watched Cameron go to work. In the previous encounters Sarah had witnessed, Cameron had always gone toe-to-toe with the other bigger terminators in a major slugfest. The other machines had to mass at least twice what the petite terminator did and Sarah thought they should have easily been able to out muscle her. But that had never been the case and Sarah had come to assume that part of what was 'special' about Cameron was a more advanced design which made her, pound-for-pound, a lot stronger than the run-of-the-mill T-850 series.

But what she saw now was a fighting style completely different than what Cameron had ever used before. Now she moved very fast and fluidly – like a mist flowing around three stationary trees. She bobbed and weaved, landing a quick blow here and there, but her three opponents seemed unable to even touch her. Over a matter of ten seconds she seemed to use her movements to drawn the three terminators ever tighter around her until it seemed like the three would merely have to slam together to trap Cameron between them and crush her.

Then a blinding white blaze of light seemed to engulf the combatants. A glow so bright, Sarah had to briefly throw a hand in front of her face to protect her eyes. Forcing herself to look through the cracks between her fingers, she saw the bright light resolve itself into a bar about four feet in length. And then squinting hard, Sarah saw it was extending out of one end of the gray cylinder Cameron had been carrying. But it didn't look like a bar for more than an instant as Cameron swung it around in a blinding blur. Immediately, Sarah could see arms and legs, heads and parts of torsos being ripped apart and raining to the floor, the severed ends glowing as molten metal oozed from the gaping wounds.

In a matter of seconds, it was over. The three terminators were nothing more than broken fragments scattered over a twenty foot area. And Cameron stood in the center looking like George Lucas' ultimate wet-dream. Oh, the way her black tank top had ridden up during the fight exposing half of her naked ass was a part of it, but mainly it was the weapon she clasped in her right hand, the glowing blade angled down at thirty degrees in the direction of the floor. As Sarah climbed to her feet and started moving from her sheltered position, she knew there was no other description for it. The weapon in Cameron's hand was a light saber. Oh, it didn't look quite like the traditional ones from the movies as this blade was about the same diameter as a baseball bat rather than the pool cue thin design of the Jedi. But with the way it looked able to cut through anything, as the remains of the harden terminator chassis clearly attested, it achieved the same effect.

But Cameron seemed to hold the pose for only a moment and then she did something no Jedi would do, well, except for that evil one thought Sarah trying to remember his name. But Sarah's life had never been about attending movies since the night Kyle had come crashing into her life. Ever since, the only time she saw movies were on the late, late shows when her nightmares about Judgment Day kept her from sleeping. And then his name popped into her head, Anakin, the one who was destined to become Darth Vader in the final episode she had yet to see.

Cameron calmly walked over to the nearest terminator skull, brought down her blazing weapon and played the beam over it until it was nothing but a molten heap of slag. As Sarah watched her move over to the second head, she knew the Jedi wouldn't be so vicious towards their fallen opponents. But then they lived in a make-believe world where severed heads couldn't come back to haunt you as had already happened to them once before.

As Sarah watched, Cameron moved on to the third head. It was only about half melted when the beam of her light saber pulsated for a second and then abruptly blinking off. Immediately, Cameron set the weapon carefully on the floor and then stood shaking her hand.

Sarah walked up just as Cameron paused in her hand waving and stood examining it. Sarah could see her hand and fingers were covered with ugly blisters.

Feeling Sarah's presence, Cameron looked up. "It gets damn hot. After the first time I used it, I always wore an insulated glove. Fortunately, nothing fatal, my hand should be okay in a few days."

Sarah nodded, as she cast her eyes around at the scattered body parts. Up close the stink of burnt flesh, even if it was synthetic Terminator flesh, was nauseating. As she saw John and Lisa approach, she waved them back.

As they paused, Cameron called out. "We need to move now, before more trouble shows up. John, move the jeep down by the secret compartment so we can load up my gear."

John had obviously seen at least part of the fight, as Sarah could see the hunger to talk about it in his eyes. But even he realized there was a time to talk and a time to run and this was a time to run. Grabbing Lisa's hand he ran towards the jeep.

After Cameron ripped a piece of cloth off of the nearest terminator body, she wrapped it around the weapon and then lifted it with her left hand. Then the two women headed back towards the back of the warehouse at a jog.

Sarah wanted to ask about the light saber, but decided to wait until John was present so Cameron would only have to explain once. Instead she asked, "What was that fighting style? I have never seen you use anything like it before."

"I had time to evaluate my past performance while I was waiting for Lisa to be born. I came to the conclusion using simple brute force resulted in too much risk of damage to my body versus other potential fighting styles. After Lisa was born, I spent several hours a day studying a variety of martial arts forms. As of 1970, and perhaps even today, I was the only occidental-looking woman to simultaneously hold a fifth degree black belt in Jujutsu, an eighth degree black belt in Taekwondo, and a seventh degree black in Kendo. Of course, when I trained and competed I held my speed down to 68 percent and my strength down to 22 percent to not have too much of an advantage. Fortunately, as a side benefit some of the training techniques helped me develop some improved algorithms for enhanced fine motor control."

Sarah remembered the precision of Cameron's first few shots. "Yeah, that was some impressive shooting."

"Thanks. After reviewing my records of our previous encounters, I determined the loss of one eye decreases their efficiency by eight percent. Loss of both eyes drops it by over thirty-seven percent. So, good marksmanship has its rewards."

The women reached the secret compartment just as John was raising the back hatch on the Jeep. Quickly, they filled the back until only one package remained, which Cameron set on the hood of the jeep.

"What are we going to do about the bodies?" asked Sarah. Previously, they had always been careful to dispose of any remains to avoid bringing the existence of terminators to the attention of the authorities. But it was going to be a time-consuming task getting all of the scattered pieces together, yet alone find a place to fit them in the already full Jeep.

Cameron patted the box on the hood. "That's what this is for. It's a hybrid phosphorus-thermite bomb. It will melt anything it touches, including terminators. It will destroy the warehouse, but there's nothing here we need other than what is in the car."

Cameron motioned the others to get into the Jeep and climbed behind the wheel herself. She backed the Jeep up until there was room to turn it around. Then when she reached the terminator remains, she stopped, hopped out, lifted the box down from the hood, flipped two switches on it and then got back into the car and drove out through the gaping hole made by the larger vehicle the terminators had been driving.

As they pulled out of the building Cameron explained the bomb was on a sixty second timer. They were four blocks and two turns away when they all heard the muffled 'boom' of the distant explosion.

They drove in silence for a couple of minutes before John couldn't hold his patience any longer. "Cameron, where the hell did you get the light saber?"

Before she could respond, Lisa, who was sitting in the back with John, piped up with a "Mommy, he used a bad word."

Sarah watched as Cameron glanced back in the rear view mirror. "Honey, he doesn't know about our rule, so we going to let it go this one time. Okay?"

"Okay," said Lisa with a hint of disappointment in her voice, which made Sarah wonder what the normal penalty was for using foul language.

Cameron nodded and then addressed John and Sarah. "It's obvious normal guns have limited affectivity against terminators and that we needed a weapon that would quickly put them down and keep them down. Eventually the idea occurred to me that what we need was something like the light sabers from the movie which can cut through anything. The movies didn't give any clues about how they are actually supposed to work, so I had to come up with a solution of my own. The glass vials you saw contain a two-part chemical which when mixed and ignited transforms into a forty-seven hundred degree Celsius plasma. Fortunately, it is a simple process to ionize the mixture so it can be controlled by an electro-magnetic field. The cylinder extends a four foot long, thin four-layer wire just before the plasma is ignited. The outer layer is insulation to prevent the plasma beam from melting it. The next two layers form an electrical circuit to create the magnetic field which controls the plasma. The innermost layer is a special ferrous alloy with also reacts with the magnetic field and keeps the wire taut.

"Of course, this light saber has a few drawbacks that never happen in the movies. First, the ampoules only contain enough fuel for twenty-one seconds, so you better not light it off until you are ready to use it. Second, once the reaction is started you can't turn it on and off. You can turn it off early, but even if you only use it for two seconds, you are going to have to replace the ampoules before you can use it again. Third, the handle gets very hot. Well, you can see what it did to my hand. Fourth, you don't want to ever touch the plasma blades of two weapons. This will destroy the central wire which controls the plasma and you will get an explosive result equal to about half a stick of dynamite. So there won't ever be any movie-style sword fights with these weapons."

Sarah looked over at Cameron and watched for a moment as the streetlights threw alternate waves of light and dark across her face. "Why not just stick with the plasma rifle we used back at the bank? A weapon that can be used at more than arm's length would seem to be a big advantage."

"Yeah, it would be except I have uncovered a significant design flaw with the plasma rifle."

Sarah waited, but Cameron didn't elaborate. Finally, she asked, "And what is the design flaw? Perhaps we can come up with a solution."

Cameron glanced over at Sarah and grinned. "So you became a physicist during the five minutes I was gone?"

Sarah gave an embarrassed shrug. Yeah, if the mechanical mind that had just created a light saber couldn't find a solution, there was exactly a zero percent chance she would either.

Apparently, Cameron felt like explaining would have some benefit, so she continued to speak.

"Remember how when a terminator is hit with a high voltage electrical surge, it shuts down for one hundred twenty seconds? Well, it is a protective measure to keep the memory storage devices and the neural network central processors from being damaged."

"Yeah, I understand all that."

"Unfortunately, what wasn't known when the plasma rifles were first developed is that they put out an EMP pulse when fired against which the surge protection circuitry is ineffective. The pulse doesn't have any effect on the memory storage arrays, but it does a hard reset on the neural network system. For most terminators which operate on their hardwired programming without an active 'learning' mode, this isn't a big issue, but for me it is like experiencing a Bill Gates' blue screen of death. All of the emotional capabilities I have developed through my accumulated experience are wiped out. This first happened when you fired the plasma rifle back in the bank when we escaped from 1999. It happened a second time two years after I arrived in 1963 when the resistance cell's chief scientist and I were testing one of the guns out in the desert."

Cameron looked into the rear view mirror again. "I'm sorry, John. All of the data from the time we spent together is still in my systems, but it is just abstract information. Every time my neural network is reset it takes between two and three months for my network to acquire enough experience to cross a threshold where I have emotions more or less equivalent to human. However every time I pass the threshold and, well, come alive, it is like I am emotionally a whole different person. And the last time it happened, when I was back in 1963, you weren't a part of my life. So, I know you are Lisa's father, but for the present, I don't . . . ah . . . feel anything towards you. I hope you can understand and hopefully this may change in the future."

Sarah turned and looked into the backseat. John was staring out the side window and she could see he was blinking hard. She suddenly understood at least a little now about Cameron's reaction when John had first run up and hugged her. To her he was almost like a stranger. When Cameron had disappeared into the time displacement machine, Sarah had expected it would be days or weeks before John would recover from her departure. Now, she was still here, yet the next days might remain just as difficult. Nothing ever seemed to go easy for her or her son.

To give John time to collect his thoughts and start to adjust to what Cameron had said, Sarah turned back to Cameron and asked about the one thing she hadn't understood.

"Cameron, who is Bill Gates?"

Cameron turned and stared at her for longer than Sarah had ever seen her take her eyes off the road when driving.

"You don't know who Bill Gates is?" When Sarah shook her head, Cameron addressed the same question at John. It took a couple tries to penetrate his funk, but he eventually said 'No', too.

"What about Windows?" Sarah shook her head again. "PCs?"

"What's that?" asked Sarah starting to get a little concerned about this line of questioning.

"Personal computers. You know, the devices everyone has in their homes to connect to the internet."

Sarah stared at Cameron and suddenly she seemed more alien than ever. "What are you talking about? Individual people don't have computers; they would fill their whole houses. Only companies like IBM and Cray have computers."

Cameron sat there silent for a minute, obviously deep in thought. "This is bad. There has been a significant time ripple."

"Time ripple?" echoed Sarah feeling a little stupid, but needing to understand what Cameron was talking about.

"The 2008 from which I left was filled with computers. They came in all sizes with powerful ones as small as a hardcover book and some were even built into portable phones. There were almost as many computers on the planet as people. Something important has changed in the past."

Cameron paused for a moment, before continuing. "Sarah, when I joined you, what year did I say I was sent back from?"

"2047 – eight years after Judgment Day."

"Hmm," Cameron seemed to muse as she processed this information.

"What?" asked Sarah.

"Oh, that just verifies my estimates of the effect of having only centralized computers compared to more numerous smaller devices. Theory says once a certain threshold of technology is achieved, the singularity – where some form of intelligence makes the jump to super-intelligence – is inevitable. However a centralized computer system which limits overall human-computer interaction would be expected to slow the process. And this demonstrates it does, as Judgment Day is shifted back roughly twenty-two years versus my timeline."

Cameron drove on in silence for a few more seconds, as if to give time for her words to sink in. "While theory is all well and good, we better focus on the more practical and figure out what happened. Let's start at the beginning, who is the President?"

"Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Cameron shook her head. "It is supposed to be George Bush."

"George Bush was the president a long time ago, like sixteen years ago," answered Sarah.

"No, I'm talking about his son. But how could Schwarzenegger even be President? He doesn't meet the native-born American requirement."

"After the events of June 5th, 2003, a twenty-eighth amendment was rushed through eliminating the native born requirement. It was ratified by the required thirty-eight States on January 22nd, 2004 and Schwarzenegger was elected in a landslide in the following November elections."

"What happened on June 5th, 2003?" asked Cameron.

Sarah stared out of her own side window for a moment. When they had arrived in 2008 from 1999 it had been such a shock to learn the years she had missed were referred to as the 'Decade of the Terrorists' in the press. First, there had been September 11th, 2001 and the World Trade Center incident in New York which had left three thousand dead. Then had come the May 22nd, 2002 toxic gas attack on Tokyo which had left sixty thousand dead. And finally, on June 5th, 2003 there had been the simultaneous dirty nuke attack on Washington, London and Paris - leaving over three million dead and the cultural, economic, and political heart nearly torn out of Western civilization. When Sarah found out it was almost like her nightmare of Judgment Day had come early.

Finding her voice, Sarah answered. "On June 5th, 2003 terrorists set off nukes in Washington, London, and Paris. Three million died including most of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government. Apparently, there was utter chaos for a while and Governor Schwarzenegger was the only one offering an effective plan of action. He swept into power by almost universal acclamation. Things are quieter now, but martial law has only recently been partially lifted."

"How do you know it was terrorists?" asked Cameron.

"Who else could it be? Do you think Schwarzenegger would kill three million people just to get the constitution changed so he could be elected president?"

Cameron shook her head, as she pulled the car over to the curb. "Do we still live here?" she asked, as she nodded to the stucco house across the street.

"Yeah, we still live in the same dump," came John's voice from the back seat for the first time in quite a while. "Apparently, some things never change."

"No," said Cameron in response to Sarah's last question as she put the Jeep back into gear and headed towards their driveway. "I wasn't thinking of Schwarzenegger being behind it. I was thinking of Skynet. It will try to kill off humanity in the future, so what does it care if a few million go early?"

Sarah played with the idea of Skynet being behind the nuke attack, as Cameron pulled the Jeep around to the carport behind the house. It certainly seemed plausible given all of the terminator activity she had observed since the jump up to 2008.

As they climbed out of the car and started carrying Cameron's equipment into the house, Sarah asked. "Cameron, how many terminators were operating in 2008 before you went downtime?"

Cameron paused with the box containing the glass vials for the light sabers in her hands. "We ran into seven and I suspected there were at least four more working somewhere in the city, based on things I had observed. Why?"

"We have evidence from resistance groups and from other sources that there are over two hundred terminators active in the L.A. area alone. They have infiltrated the highest levels of the city government, as well as the police force." Suddenly Cameron's version of the timeline was starting to sound very inviting to Sarah – only a handful of terminators and no nuke attack on the capitols, of course in exchange Judgment Day came twenty-two years earlier. Perhaps they were in the classic 'no win' situation.

Cameron nodded. "We need to identify where the timeline shifted and see if we can fix it. Skynet is obviously trying a more direction approach to prevent an effective resistance from developing after Judgment Day rather than just going back to eliminate a few key individuals."

"But where do we even begin?" asked Sarah.

"Everything was the same when I left from 1970 and the personal computer revolution begins around 1980. So whatever was the key event, it happened somewhere within that ten year span."

"That seems like an awfully big window."

"Then I guess a trip to the library is in order to see if I can spot something to narrow it down before we head back downtime," answered Cameron before turning to head back into the house.

Sarah was left standing alone on the back step and she looked up into the dark blue sky which was just starting to show the faintest hint of pink with the approaching dawn. For sixteen years her life had been so simple – protect John and stop Skynet. But suddenly everything seemed to be changing so fast, she could barely keep up. The only positive part was that in Cameron's version of the timeline, Washington, London, and Paris had not been destroyed in 2003, proving the future was not set. It WAS therefore possible to stop Skynet before Judgment Day became inevitable.

End of Chapter 2

Author's Note

Several of the reviews to the first chapter said I had written myself into a corner. What do you think? Let's see what I managed with the second chapter: A) started an epic new plotline, B) explained the big step backwards in Cameron's personality between the pilot and subsequent episodes which everyone talks about, C) rebooted Cameron and John's relationship back to the beginning. Hmm, I don't think I was in that tight of a corner!

Have a great day,

Duane


	3. Chapter 3

Mar 1, 2008

1963 – Chapter 3

John unconsciously tugged at his tight shirt collar as he took in the crowd stretched out before him. None of his training had prepared him for this. All of his life had been spent at the extreme other end of the social spectrum – from his childhood years with the guerillas in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Belize to his time trapped in the California foster care system even to his recent years on the run with his mother. But now here he stood on the fringes of the power elite of Greater 1971 Los Angeles. Movie stars, entertainment moguls, and political leaders were spread out across the width of the large ballroom before him with the surplus spilling out into the dimly lit pool area beyond.

But they weren't here to hobnob with the rich and famous, no they were here on a more important mission. They were here for the sole purpose of keeping one 'Thomas Griffin' from dying tonight.

With Cameron's abrupt return to 2008 they had discovered a ripple in the time line had engulfed their world. Washington, London, and Paris weren't supposed to have been destroyed by 'dirty bomb' terrorist attacks. Los Angeles wasn't supposed to be overrun by hundreds of terminators from the future. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't supposed to be President.

Since only Cameron had memories of how things were supposed to be, it had up to her to find the key event, or events as it turned out, which had led history down this alternate path. She had spent weeks at the library reading microfilm copies of old newspapers and news magazines looking for key discrepancies. In the end she had found four events back in the 1970's that were different from her memories and which didn't seem to be related by a 'cause and effect' relationship to earlier discrepancies. The earliest one was here and she said it was best to start at the beginning, because the later events might not reflect active involvement by Skynet, but might just be a natural result of the earlier changes via some connection she couldn't yet decipher.

And that was when the arguments began. Cameron had been for just her and Lisa going back alone to tackle this problem while John and Sarah remained up in 2008. Her logic had been that if John and Sarah went back and they managed to fix the time line, then when they returned to 2008 all they would have for memories of the past thirty years would be the ones from the closed off time loop rather than memories of the true history of events. If on the other hand they stayed up in 2008, when the time loop was healed they would be left with the correct memories of past events.

But both John and Sarah had adamantly objected to this course of action. It was one thing for Cameron to retreat alone to the peace and obscurity of 1963 to have the baby. But it was completely different to go back alone into a situation where she would be going up against an unknown number of terminators and other Skynet minions without any backup. In the seven months they had been together since Cameron had first appeared in 1999 New Mexico, there had been several occasions where they had only survived and won by working as a team.

They had fought and argued for days before Cameron finally dropped her opposition and acceded to them going back as a team. John had almost expected some subterfuge on Cameron's part that would have left him and Sarah behind, when they reached another secret time displacement facility, this time hidden out in the desert, but the translation had gone like clockwork.

So here they were at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for the big Hollywood-style post-premiere party for the new movie 'Space Angels'. With stars Steve McQueen and James Coburn, it had been billed as a cross between 'The Magnificent Seven' and '2001: A Space Odyssey'. But with thirty years of hindsight at his disposal, John knew it was destined to be the biggest flop of the 1970s and almost completely forgotten by the 21st century.

It had struck him as strange when Cameron had told him that the first disruption to the time line she could find had occurred at this party. Why would Skynet see this event as a key event in history? He could sort of see the logic of going after his mother, if he was destined to defeat the machine, but why Thomas Griffin, the writer of this movie? In the timeline he remembered, Thomas Griffin was a complete unknown, as he was killed in some kind of a brawl at the party before making any significant mark on history. And even at first when Cameron had explained about his future in the original timeline, it seemed like such a stretch to see him as a key. After flopping as a science fiction film writer, he would turn his attention to 'real' science and two years later publish a book entitled 'The Computer Paradigm Shift'. He never was directly involved with creating any hardware or software which were key to the development of the personal computer. But his book would become required reading at most engineering and computer science schools, and Cameron said many of the giants in the personal computer field of the original timeline would credit his book with being one of their main inspirations.

John tugged at the collar of his tuxedo shirt again; alternate timelines were enough to drive him crazy. It seemed like he had barely adjusted to jumping from 1999 to 2008 before discovering all the history he had ever known could be considered wrong from Cameron's pre-'time ripple' perspective.

"Stop fiddling with that," came the whisper from the haunting voice of Cameron, who was standing to his right. Every time she spoke his heart still seemed to beat faster even though for the last four weeks everything about their relationship had changed. For from his perspective that was how long it had been since Cameron's disappearance through the time machine to 1963 and then abrupt return mere minutes later. But for her, almost eight years had passed in that blink of an eye. And more importantly, during those eight years the emotional part of her neural network had been reset to zero and then reformed without him. She looked almost the same. She sounded the same. But the longer he was around her, the more he had come to realize she simply wasn't the same person inside. Oh, she still had her memories of the time they had spent together, but there was no emotional attachment.

John glanced over at her and for a moment she looked like the Cameron of old. Her hair had grown out some and was now parted in the middle again. The bangs were longer, but still present. However she did now look more like herself than a dark-haired clone of Carol Brady. Then he glanced down and took in her attire. Most of the women present, including surprisingly his Mom, were dressed in formal evening wear appropriate for this gala affair. But Cam had only made a few compromises from her normal combat attire. She was wearing a thin blue blouse so sheer her lacy black bra was plainly visible beneath. Her pants were dark with thin white pin-striping and in a cut that looked more appropriate at a riding club than for a Hollywood ball. However in place of the matching pair of riding boots those pants would typically call for, she wore a pair of black steel-toed biker boots with four inches heels and which laced up almost to her knees. Topping it all off, as those it was some kind of bizarre fashion statement, was the single black glove on her right hand extending up passed her elbow. John knew it was there for the strictly practical purpose of protecting her hand if she was forced to use the light saber stowed in her shoulder bag.

John wondered for a moment what the other guests would make of her, but this was Hollywood and they were in the fashion lull between the hippy 60's and disco 70's, so perhaps anything did go. Her attire certainly wasn't any more outlandish than his tux. If he had ever imagined he would find himself wearing a tux, which certainly wasn't something he had ever expected in his life of battling Skynet and its terminators, it would have been something clean, simple - an elegant black. But of course instead he found himself in a crushed blue velvet jacket with black lapels and a white shirt with frilly over-abundant lace work down the front and on the cuffs. Oh, the joy of being in the early 70's, he thought.

"Give me a break, Cam," he said in reply. "I have never worn a tie, let alone a bowtie, in my life."

"Well, you DID want to blend in," she said with a light quirk of a smile.

She was obviously remembering a comment he had made that in some ways she seemed to come across as even less human than when they had first come out of the time displacement bubble from 1999. At the time, he had said it with a hint of anger as though it was Cameron's fault their relationship had changed. But she had merely shrugged the comment off with a smile saying the longer she was around 'the locals', her term for people who didn't know about the Skynet war, the less she worried about blending in. For as she said, never once had someone come out and said 'Oh, you're different, you must be a robot-girl.' They might think her strange or eccentric, but no one was ever going to suspect the truth.

And so a comment he had blurted out in pain had in the end turned out to be the first small step in the process of rebuilding a measure of rapport.

Their exchange was at that point interrupted by Wally Jay, the man who had gotten them their invitation to this event. "Come, I see Steve and Jimmy over by the bar. Let me introduce you."

When this first time line ripple point turned out to be in L.A. barely a month after Cameron's departure for 2008, they had decided the simplest thing to do was for Cameron and Lisa to resume their old lives with Sarah and John as out-of-town guests. And even now, as they prepared to do whatever was necessary to preserve Thomas Griffin's life, Lisa was staying with Samantha, one of the resistance fighters sent back to 1963 to help build the back-up time machines. Of course, Samantha's mission was always intended to be one-way and she was now happily married to a 'local' and raising a family of her own.

One of the main reasons they had decided to have Cameron resume her old life was Wally Jay. He had been her Jujitsu instructor for five years and more importantly had also been the martial arts advisor for 'Space Angels'. So this had given them a simple way to get invited to the party without having to sneak in.

John had gone along with Cameron when she went to the dojo to speak to Wally. John had found the man to be an affable guy in his mid-fifties. He looked Chinese, but he spoke perfect English and John eventually found out he had been born and raised in Hawaii before settling in L.A. John had even suited up and sparred for a few minutes with the man, for if Cameron spoke so highly of him, he must have something worth learning.

John had never been as heavily into the martial arts as his mother and had only pursued it as far as a first degree black belt in Karate. No, hand-to-hand combat skills had always struck him as fairly pointless when his primary opponents were terminators. So, on the whole he had focused more of his attention on weapons training and the art of homemade explosives – a couple pounds of homebrew C-4 was a lot more effective against terminators than a perfect round-house kick. But Wally was cool and he had shown him a couple simple moves to use in a pinch that John had never seen before.

Bringing his attention back to the present, John watched as Wally took his Mom's elbow and headed diagonally across the ballroom floor in the direction of the bar. Sarah had definitely made a conquest in Wally, who hadn't met her until the limo picked them up for the trip to the premiere. And looking around as he and Cameron followed in their wake he realized countless male eyes were watching his Mom's progress across the room.

Sometimes it almost seemed like he had forgotten what she really looked like since Sarah had been going with the black dye job for the five years since the events at the Cyberdine research facility. But, back here in 1971 where the FBI wasn't looking for her, she had reverted back to her more natural light brown hair color.

But John was certain it wasn't the hair color which was attracting all the male attention. No, it was most certainly the portion of her physique highlighted by the red gown she was wearing. The strapless gown with the large billowy skirt and matching red gloves left her upper arms, shoulders, upper chest, and most of her back fully exposed. And after fifteen years of a daily training regime which would break most Navy Seals, she had a ripped, lean body where every muscle was clearly visible as she gracefully made her way across floor. With the women's fitness craze still more than ten years in the future, John doubted that any man in the room had ever seen a woman's body quite like his Mother's. Certainly, Wally Jay had been taken by her and spent the whole ride to the movie discussing her training and nutritional methods.

John wondered what the man would think if he knew that under the breakaway skirt Sarah was wearing a leotard, combat boots, a large hunting knife strapped to her right calf and a small Beretta on her left. It was a good thing this was in the pre-'X-ray Machine at every entrance' era or the amount of ordinance the three of them were carrying, let alone Cam's metallic endoskeleton, would get them into all kinds of trouble.

They were just about to reach the spot where Steve McQueen and James Coburn were talking and laughing at the center of a small circle of people when the reality of the situation began to sink in with John. They were really here in the heart of Hollywood. They had passed many famous people he recognized on the walk across the ballroom, but now they were actually going to meet two of the most famous men present. John's whole life from his earliest memory had been focused on preparing for Judgment Day and his ultimate role in the salvation of mankind. For a moment, John tried to forget his fate and worked to burn these events into his memory to relive during the inevitable dark times ahead.

John glanced over at Cameron to see how she was reacting to this situation. He saw she was almost completely ignoring the famous stars in front of them, but was instead steadily sweeping her gaze across the crowd. Doubtlessly she was on the lookout for the trouble they had come to stop. John knew he should be, too, but at least for now he didn't care. Trouble would find them soon enough and just for this instant he wanted to enjoy this situation which was unlikely to ever occur in his life again.

Sarah and Wally were less than ten feet from the loose circle of people around the film's two big stars when Wally abruptly veered off to the right. John wasn't certain what had caused the change of course, but his right hand immediately unbuttoned his jacket and then slid towards the butt of his Glock tucked away in its shoulder harness. He saw Cam's bag start to come off her shoulder before she relaxed and slid it back into place.

Looking ahead, John saw Wally had come to a halt and was exchanging a short bow with a much younger oriental man wearing a dark turquoise Nehru jacket. Then, as the two men stepped forward going from the formal to the personal with a quick hug and a slap on the back, John recognized the second man - the legendary Bruce Lee.

As the two men broke their embrace, John and Cameron stepped forward from one side and McQueen and Coburn broke through their circle of friends to approach from the opposite side.

"Bruce, I haven't seen you in a couple of months. Chad has missed our sessions. Where have you been?" asked McQueen while reaching out to shake Lee's hand.

Even though a big grin adorned McQueen's face, John could still feel the charisma radiating off the man. As he stared at these legendary icons, John wondered if it was something you could learn or if you had to be born with it. Suddenly, it was as though he was channeling Cameron in the way she could focus with the precision of a laser as she watched someone she wanted or needed to mimic. For John knew he would need to develop his own inner source of charisma for the day when he would be called on to ask men to undertake suicide missions in their battle against Skynet.

"Hello, Steve," answered Lee, as he turned to shake Coburn's proffered hand in turn. "I have been over in Hong Kong prepping a movie. I just got back yesterday to secure additional financing. I will be in town for ten days, so we should certainly try to get together for a session or two, I would enjoy seeing how your son is progressing."

Before this conversation could continue, Wally grabbed Cameron's arm and pulled her forward.

"Bruce, I would like to introduce Cameron Miller, the best student I have ever worked with."

Lee gave her a quick up-and-down before offering his hand. "Wally, I thought you always said I was your best pupil."

"That was then, this is now," answered Wally with a small laugh.

Lee turned his attention fully towards Cameron. "It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Bruce Lee."

"Cameron Miller," responded Cam.

"So, Cameron," began Lee as he took a half step back and gave her another quick scan. "Do you think you are better than me?"

Cam, who had been dedicating part of her attention to scanning the room, shot John a quick wink and then turned her full attention to Lee.

"Me? How could a little girly-girl like me beat someone like you?" answered Cameron.

John took the pair of them in. Lee probably had thirty or forty pounds on her; well he would if she was the human girl she was pretending to be. But in her biker boots Cameron towered over him by almost four inches.

Lee looked over to Jay and raised an eyebrow.

"She is just being modest," responded Jay. "She went from zero to fifth degree black in Jujutsu in five years. I have never heard of anyone else doing it in under twelve."

Lee looked back to Cameron. "Truth time, how good are you really?"

Cameron appeared to eye the small crowd of on-lookers then shrugged. "Since we are going to be fighting on the same team, I guess I can let you in on a little of the truth."

John saw the questioning look appear on Lee's face when Cam made the comment about them fighting on the same team. Since John had at least a hint about what was probably going to happen sometime in the next couple of hours, that comment didn't have the same impact on him. But he guessed he might have a similar expression caused by her 'little of the truth' remark. What exactly was she about to say?

"In addition to studying with Wally," continued Cameron, "I have also been studying Taekwondo with Master Won Kang." She gave a little martial arts type bow. "Eighth degree black. And Kendo with Grandmaster Noriaki Sato." Another little bow. "Seventh degree black."

A look of amazement passed of Wally Jay's face. He obviously had no idea Cameron had also been training simultaneously in other forms. Then John took in the similar expression on McQueen and Coburn's faces. He knew they both trained with Lee, but doubted if either of them were even first degree blacks.

During this lull, Cameron nudged Jay and then pointedly looked over at John and Sarah.

Jay apparently got the hint. "Bruce, Steve, Jimmy let me introduce John Baum, a friend of Cameron's, and his mother, Sarah."

The three men nodded politely at John before turning their full attention to Sarah, not that the two fortyish movie stars hadn't been paying her a lot of attention from the first moment they had walked up.

"Let me guess," began McQueen. "You're another martial arts wiz, they do seem to be crawling out of the woodwork tonight."

Sarah gave him a beguiling smile. "Oh, I wouldn't ever claim to be in Cameron's league. I have never had much formal training."

Coburn gestured towards Sarah's left shoulder, "That's an interesting scar."

Sarah looked down. "Gunshot wound. Nine millimeter." Then she looked back up, "I was a photojournalist with the Sandinista rebels under Tomas Martinez down in Nicaragua back in the early sixties. I was shot a couple of times and have several interesting knife wounds. Eventually, I learned to look after myself, but I am more of a street fighter than formally trained like Cameron."

John could see both of the stars were eyeing how the muscles in her shoulders rippled as she gestured. He had no idea if either of them was married at the moment, but from the looks they were shooting at her, he knew either of them would gladly escort her out of there if she gave them the slightest hint.

But her comments about her assorted scars - most of them acquired in battles against terminators, though a few actually did date from their time in Central America – and also her comments about being a street fighter got John thinking about how his Mom would do against Bruce Lee. Oh, there was no question Cameron would whip his butt, but a Sarah versus Bruce Lee encounter was a different matter. Bruce definitely had the flashy moves, but John doubted he had ever used his skills in a true win-or-die situation. His mother though had gone one-on-one against terminators and won. And she had been forced to kill a few men down through the years, too. His mother simply had an indomitable spirit. She had been in situations where she truly believed if she lost it might be the end of mankind. And she had always found that last bit of inner strength to carry on the battle no matter how battered and banged up her body might be. Yes, a contest between his mother and Bruce Lee would definitely be interesting.

"So, John," started Lee, interrupting John's train of thought. "How good is Cameron? Have you seen her compete?"

John had never seen Cam in a formal martial arts competition, but he had certainly seen her in action a number of times. And then their last encounter with terminators in the warehouse after Cameron and Lisa arrived from the past came to the front of his mind. He had been over sixty feet away with his head just poking around the edge of the heavy steel hatch in hopes he wouldn't get it shot off. But still the image of Cameron in amongst the three burly terminators would be forever engraved in his mind. She had fought in a style he had never seen her use before. Fast and fluid, she had moved with a speed he hadn't believed possible for man or terminator. He knew Bruce Lee was famous as much for his speed as for his skill, but John couldn't image him being in even the same league as Cameron.

"Oh, yes, she is truly remarkable."

"You will have to forgive my friend," jumped in Cameron. "He is prone to exaggeration. Pretty soon he will be telling you my abilities are all due to the hyper-alloy combat chassis I have hidden under my skin. You know, sort of like the robots in the movie only covered in flesh so I can pass unnoticed among humans."

John almost choked at this near revelation, but then he had to admit her comparison to the robots in the movie made her whole comment sound more ridiculous than real. For the robots, as depicted in the movie, had been such clumsy creations that they made C3-P0, even with his metallic gold skin, look perfectly human by comparison.

Trying to keep the focus on the lighter, humorous aspects of Cam's remarks, John casually draped his arm around her waist before speaking - although if he truly acknowledged things to himself, he would have admitted he was marking Cameron as his territory in front of these powerful men. "Yes, you are my special little robot-girl aren't you?"

"Yes," Cam responded in a monotone. "I . . . am . . . your . . . robot . . . girl." With an exaggerated mechanical motion she leaned her head to the side and then jerkily turned it to look each of the nearby men in the eye. "I . . . am . . . the . . . martial . . . arts . . . training . . . device . . . of . . . the . . . future." Then she stepped away from John and in a slow-motion robotic style demonstrated one of the standard Jujitsu training katas. After thirty seconds she ended with a perfect Michael Jackson 'moonwalk', which wouldn't break across the American music scene for another dozen years.

Someone standing nearby started to clap which quickly grew into a loud round of applause from everyone at that end of the ballroom. Cameron's stony robotic expression abruptly broke into a grin and then with a fluid bow she glided back over to John's side.

Several people tried to speak at once, but they were drowned out by a loud bellow, "Griffin, get over here or I may have just found your replacements!"

John turned to look at the speaker. He was a big florid man with a giant gut that hung over his belt; no one was going to mistake him for a leading-man style actor. John realized he had been standing with McQueen and Coburn when they had first approached and when the stars had moved over to join Lee, he had followed along.

John caught Wally Jay's eye and then threw a questioning glance towards the man.

Jay leaned close to be heard over the clamor still surrounding Cameron. "Tony Solomon, the movie's executive producer."

Just then a tall-gangly man of about thirty with thick glasses and an atrociously ugly paisley tuxedo stepped up beside Solomon.

"Griff," began Solomon. "These people have this wickedly funny human robot sketch. It will be perfect for my next comedy. Talk to them and then get back to me on Monday with some ideas of how we can best use it."

"Yes, sir, Mister Solomon," answered Griffin with several bobs of his head that struck John as being almost as comical as Cam's robot maneuvers.

Griffin moved over and John found it necessary to crane his head back; the guy stood at least six foot four.

"John Baum," said John sticking out his hand. "And this is my friend, Cameron Miller."

Griffin shook the offered hand. "Thomas Griffin, but my friends call me Griff. I am the movie's writer and sort of the unofficial assistant to Mister Solomon."

This is going smoother than I had hoped, thought John. Instead of hunting for the man, he comes looking for us. Which got John wondering how much of Cameron's remarks and subsequent little display had been intentional with this goal in mind. Her personality in this latest incarnation he had been experiencing since her arrival with Lisa was certainly a different mix of machine AI and quasi-human then what had existed during the first go around. Perhaps, he thought, it was the five plus years this one had been evolving versus the mere seven months of the one he known before.

John turned his attention back to Griffin. Now that they had located him, it was just necessary to keep him by their side until this evening's events unfolded. And again Cameron seemed to be at the center of making this happen.

Lee had stepped back in front of Cameron. Reaching behind his back, he pulled a three sectioned staff from beneath his jacket. "This is a sanjiegun. Have you ever used one before?"

Cameron shook her head. "I don't think I have ever seen one before."

John recognized it as a staple of the couple of Bruce Lee movies he had seen on TV and assumed Cameron would have seen it there too. But she had been doing a good job of keeping things moving along, so he decided to just follow her lead for now.

"Well, that's not surprising," began Lee as he dropped into instructor mode. "It was originally developed by Chao Hong-Yin, the first Emperor of the Sung Dynasty about a thousand years ago. It was popular for a couple hundred years before falling into obscurity. I found descriptions of it in some old books and built my own. I have been training with it so I can use it in my next movie as it should make an interesting change from the nunchaku that everyone else is using. Would you like to give it a try?"

Cameron accepted the weapon from Lee and spent a few seconds seemingly randomly moving the three wooden pieces around. Then she handed it back to Lee. "Sure, but how about you give a short demonstration first, so I can get some ideas of the possibilities?"

A broad grin spread across Lee's face and John realized the guy was a real showman and that this whole party was just one big PR possibility for him.

As Lee glanced around, John suggested, 'How about we move out by the pool where there is more room to move?"

"Great idea," said Coburn clapping one arm across John's shoulder and the other one across Sarah's. "Seeing Bruce put on a demonstration is always a pleasure." As he started leading the way towards the row of doors, the arm across John's shoulder slipped away while the one across Sarah's seemed to pull her in a little tighter.

John watched his Mother's face and for a second thought the martial arts demonstration was going to start early and Jimmy Coburn might find himself more directly involved then he had intended, but then Sarah seemed to give a mental shrug and wrapped her own arm around Coburn's waist.

As Cameron stepped forward to walk with Lee, John made sure Griffin was still in tow.

The large rectangular pool was situated about fifty feet beyond the ballroom doors. From one corner of the ballroom wall to the edge of the pool extended a serving table similar to the one inside although a bit smaller. From the other corner of the ballroom to the other corner of the pool extended a row of chairs, in what was an obvious attempt to keep the partygoers constrained and away from the other hotel guests. Within this rectangular outside area a small band was set up in a corner and a few people were dancing.

When the movie's main stars came trooping out behind Bruce Lee, the dancers faltered to a halt and the band switched to a mellower 'Muzak" type of background music. Lee strode over to a spot near the pool and then handed the sanjiegun temporarily back to Cameron. Quickly he stripped off his jacket and white shirt and began to do a few warm-up moves.

After about thirty seconds, Lee either was sufficiently warmed up or felt he had given the audience sufficient time to find their places, and gestured for Cameron to toss him the weapon. Immediately he began to weave the jointed weapon about his body in a complex pattern, first swinging it about his head and upper body and then switching to a pattern that emphasized combination moves using his legs. John had enough experience with a variety of weapons to see that Lee was still working to fully master the weapon from the way he occasional missed a maneuver which allowed one of the wooden staves to hit hard against one of his arms or legs.

Lee continued with his exhibition for roughly two and a half minutes before grinding to a halt. He wasn't breathing too hard, but his bare chest was glistening with sweat.

"So, are you ready to give it a try?" he asked of Cameron. When she nodded, he tossed the multi-segmented weapon to her.

Cameron walked the ten feet over to where John stood and pulled off the large handbag which she was carrying across her shoulder. John tried to take it from her without letting a grimace of effort cross his face. The bag contained one of the light-sabers, a .45-caliber Mini-Mac 10 machine pistol, and most of their spare ammo; it weighed close to forty pounds.

As John carefully set the bag by his feet, Cameron turned back towards Lee. Pointing at his gleaming torso, she grinned. "If you think I am going to strip to the waist before playing with your weapon, I am afraid you are going to be disappointed."

Lee just gave a casual shake of his head, ignoring the double entendre.

Slowly at first, Cameron began to swing the sanjiegun about her upper body. John recognized these as the same initial patterns Lee had used and knew Cam was starting in simple 'mimic' mode. Then over the next fifteen to twenty seconds the movements began to change with a gradual increase in speed and fluidity of motion. By the thirty second mark all vestiges of mimicry were gone and the movements were entirely Cameron's own.

For the first forty-five seconds Cameron remained mostly stationary and all of the movement involved just her upper body and the sanjiegun, but then slowly she began to move and it was like watching a great dancer playfully using the sanjiegun in place of the more traditional silk streamer. Around and around she went – sometimes the weapon was twirling about her and sometimes it seemed like she was twirling about it. And then Cameron began adding leaps, back flips, and other acrobatic maneuvers into the mix.

As John watched, he couldn't help but notice the similarity to the ballet dancing 'his' Cameron had come to love. He remembered sitting for hours watching her practice even though he knew with her special gifts, practice was hardly a necessity. But Cameron had explained it was almost like mediating and how when she was out on the practice floor she felt about as close to a true dream-like state as she was able to achieve.

But the 'new' Cameron was not the same as 'his' Cameron and he hadn't once seen her perform anything close to ballet – until now. As she continued to spin, twirl and whip the weapon about at an almost blinding pace, John wondered how he was going to get back together with Cam, for his heart still ached for her. He knew it was going to take time and patience, but it had been four weeks already and it felt like he hadn't made any appreciable progress. For a moment he glanced over at McQueen and Coburn who were staring at Cameron with rapt expressions. How would they, or their on-screen personas, go about winning the girl? Well, they certainly wouldn't stand about waiting for the girl to take the initiative. No, they would take charge and set about wooing the girl. And suddenly John realized that's what he needed to do; he needed to start treating her like any other girl he was interested in and slowly work towards a serious relationship.

Feeling like he had just turned a corner on the issue of how to proceed with Cameron, he relaxed a little bit and tried to enjoy the show she was putting on.

Cameron's movements steadily got bigger until she was using up almost half the space between the ballroom and the pool with most of the audience scrunched up along the edge of the pool to stay out of her way. Eventually, her movements took her near the refreshment table. Champagne was being served at the center of the long table with thirty freshly filled glasses lined up along the edge. Abruptly, Cameron shifted the pattern of her movement into an attack and the air was filled with the sound of shattering glass. The sound was not all one big crash, but a number of small pings and pops occurring at such a rapid pace it sounded almost as if a machine gun was being used. Then after a few seconds her motion swept her away from the table and everyone could see the destruction hadn't been random at all, but rather highly selective with every third champagne glass shattered to fine pieces while the remaining two thirds were perfectly intact.

Her swirling, twirling dance took her over to where Bruce Lee stood with a look of amazement on his face that was no less overawed than that on any of the other faces in the impromptu audience. Then with one final flourish, the three segments of the weapon collapsed down to one and Cameron held out the weapon to Lee.

"Thanks for sharing it," said Cameron looking even less winded than Lee after her three minutes with the sanjiegun. "It is an interesting weapon, but I think if you shortened the two outer segments by one and three-eighths inches, it would greatly improve the balance."

John watched as Lee stared down at the weapon in his hand as if seeing it for the first time, or at least as if seeing its true potential for the first time.

"How," began Lee, as if trying to ask how someone who had never seen the weapon before could be so good in a matter of seconds. But he never got a chance to finish his question as they were interrupted by a stream of men who came roaring out of the shadows along each side of the ballroom. Quickly they proceeded to form a line along the doors into the ballroom which trapped those on the inside in and those on the outside out.

All of the men were dressed in matching black karate uniforms and John suddenly felt like he had been flung into an old Chinese martial arts movie where the members of one 'school' were about to take on the students of the rival 'school'. Unfortunately, the guys in black numbered about forty while those lined up with John along the edge of the pool numbered more like twenty-five. And as John took a quick scan of the people around him, he realized most of them would be useless in a real fight. McQueen and Coburn looked like they could hold their own, but he didn't have that good of a feeling about any of the rest. So that just left Cameron, Lee, Jay, his Mom and himself to take on forty guys who looked like they fully knew how to use the nunchakus most of them were brandishing. Just great, thought John as his hand subconsciously started to slip towards the 'Great Equalizer' hanging from the harness in his left armpit.

Then further reinforcing the feeling he was in an old martial arts movie, John saw a man near the center of the line take a couple of steps forward and begin to speak.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here? Is that the great Bruce Lee standing there? This is an unexpected pleasure. Now I'll be able to kill two birds with one stone."

Cameron had turned to face the ballroom doors as the men rushed into place. Now Lee took two steps forward until he was standing beside her and leaving them the closest of all the people arrayed along the edge of the pool.

"Wang Chow," began Lee with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "What rock did you crawl out from under? I haven't seen your sorry face since the 1967 International Championships down in Long Beach. Where, if I remember correctly, I kicked your ass."

"I guess we'll have to see if you still can. I have spent the past four years training," Chow said. He paused to run through a quick kata from the 'plum flower fist' school of Shaolin Kung Fu before continuing, "While it looks like you have spent most of that time schmoozing with these Hollywood types."

Chow started to step forward. Lee made a move to join him in the cleared space between the two groups, but Cameron put up a hand to stop him.

"Bruce, you wanted to see what I can do, so let me handle this."

Bruce shook his head. "He is very, very good."

Cameron turned her head and threw Lee a quick wink. "I'm better."

Then before Lee could respond Cameron took three steps forward. "To earn the right to challenge Master Lee, you are going to have to get passed me."

Cameron made a show of putting her hands behind her back. Then she started to sway from side to side shifting her weight from one leg to the other. Finally, in sync with her movement she began to whistle the slow, melodic 'Moon River'.

John felt a shiver run down his spine as soon as he recognized the song. The sensation was enough to drive all thoughts about their current precarious situation out of his mind. That had been 'their' song – his and Cameron's. He clearly remembered the night - was it only three months ago? – when they had first heard it together. They had been curled up on the coach in the living room unable to go too far because Sarah was due home at any moment. So mostly they had been holding each other as they watch the old classic 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' on the late show. John had always felt there was more than a hint of Audrey Hepburn's face in Cameron's particularly when she wore her hair up. They had been playing light little 'touchy-feely' games until the scene where Hepburn began singing 'Moon River' on the fire escape. Then Cameron had gone completely still like she did when she was focused on learning some new skill. And that night had turned out to be the first time John had ever heard Cameron sing and 'Moon River' had been the song.

And now, suddenly, Cameron chose that song to whistle. John couldn't help but wonder if it was some hidden message or sign.

Cameron continued to whistle until Chow was about four paces away. Then continuing to sway back and forth in an almost hypnotic manner, she paused long enough to say 'So, are you really going to hit a girl?' before continuing to whistle from the exact spot in the song from where she had left off.

Chow made a move to go around her to the left, but she glided over to block his passage. Then he tried moving to the right, but again Cameron blocked him. Finally, he gave the tiniest of shrugs as though to say if she really insisted he hit her to get by her, then he was ready to oblige.

Chow threw a shockingly fast straight arm punch right at Cameron's face – and completely missed. Then he threw a second punch and missed again. Then he threw an absolute flurry of kicks and punches in a variety of styles and every single one continued to miss. And most startlingly of all, Cameron hardly seemed to vary from the simple swaying pattern she had used from the beginning. Her arms remained behind her back and weren't used to block a single blow. She even maintained her whistling although it was frequently drowned out by the grunts of effort coming from Chow.

Slowly, as the rain of near misses continued, Cameron moved through a half circle leading Chow around until he was faced back in the direction of his own men. Then, as though she had been patiently waiting for it, Chow in desperation took a wild haymaker swing. As his arm swept by and he looked overbalanced, Cameron did a lightning fast spin and tapped two fingers into his exposed back right between the shoulder blades.

To everyone else, it looked like she had added the smallest amount of force to use his own momentum to drive him to the ground. But John knew that a light tap from Cameron could be like a normal human hitting you with a five-pound sledgehammer. Chow slammed to the ground and lay there momentarily stunned.

Cameron glided away to one side as smoothly as if she was wearing ice skates rather than biker boots with four inch heels. She paused when she had opened up about a fifteen foot space.

"Had enough yet?" she taunted.

Slowly, Chow levered himself up to a kneeling position. He was breathing hard and from the way his nostrils were flaring, it was obvious to everyone present the man . . . was . . . pissed.

"Perhaps you would like a faster tempo?" Cameron continued in a teasing tone.

Then she began stomping her feet against the ground in a fast rhythmic manner working both her toes and heels. Quickly she raised her hands above her head and began clapping a fast complementary beat.

With a quick glance and a tilt of her head, John realized she want him and the others to join in with the clapping. John started to clap and found the rapid, syncopated beat challenging to maintain. Then the guitarist of the small ensemble seemed to recognize what Cameron was striving for and joined in with a jaunty flamenco tune.

As the clapping was picked up by more people along the edge of the pool, Cameron stopped clapping and began swing her arms around above her head and then at shoulder height as though she was twirling a large invisible cape.

Cameron's dance went on for almost fifteen seconds, before Chow recovered and strove to regain control of the situation by charging directly towards the 'impossible-to-hit' girl.

Almost as soon as Chow began to move, Cameron swept her invisible cape down in front of her at waist height and then shouted, "Toro . . . Toro!"

She swirled the unseen cape in front of her like Chow was some enraged bull. Then like a master matador, at the last possible second she leapt to the side and Chow smashed into the table and chairs which had been immediately behind her.

Maintaining the frenzied flamenco footwork, Cameron moved back towards the center of the cleared space and continued to dance with her back to Chow.

Chow recovered much more quickly this time compared to the first encounter where Cameron had pummeled him to the ground. He came roaring towards her with all thoughts of fancy martial arts maneuvers completely forgotten. He merely ran with outstretched arms while raging inside at how this girl was humiliating him. He thought this time he had her because her back was to him and she didn't seem to be paying him the slightest attention.

But of course, in truth Chow had Cameron's undivided attention. Again at his approach she lithely stepped out of the way at the last moment. But this time she didn't simply let him rush passed. Instead she did a quick 360 degree spin to build up some momentum. Then firmly planting her right foot, she clamped her terminator-strong left hand on the back of his neck and spun his body ninety degrees and sent it cart wheeling parallel to the ground in the direction of the ballroom doors. Chow barely had time to start a scream before his body slammed into four of his own men and they all went crashing to the ground.

Abruptly Cameron stopped her dance.

"Oops. Sor-ree," she exclaimed in a little girl's voice.

Then she looked back over her shoulder at Lee and said in a conspiratorial tone. "I guess he has never run into the super-secret 'Spanish Flamenco' fighting style before."

Lee just stared at her for a moment. She was the most scarily capable fighter he had ever seen. He had been on the receiving end of blows from Chow in matches before and knew the man was incredibly fast and could hit unbelievably hard. Yet he hadn't landed a single blow against this girl. And she didn't even seem to be trying too hard, but acted like it was all some kind of a game. Then there was that final throw where she had tossed him a good thirty feet. Using your opponent's momentum against them was one thing, but the throw she had used would take an incredible amount of strength. How had the petite-looking girl done it? Who exactly was she?

Unfortunately, the toss of the chief henchman seemed to break the spell which had been restraining all of his men. With a chorused yell of 'Hii-Yee' and brandishing weapons or fists, all of them came charging forward.

Cameron glanced at Lee. "Okay, I will accept your help now." Then without waiting for any acknowledgement, she raced forward towards the thickest clump of opponents. Four strides before reaching them she vaulted into a high handspring that lofted her almost passed the first couple of men. Then coming down hard feet first, Cameron smashed down onto the shoulders of the two men in the center of the group driving them into the ground with her great weight and massive inertia. But before they were even completely down she had turned her maneuver into a giant roundhouse kick which took down the next nearest six men around her. Three seconds into the fight and she had already eliminated eight opponents, but without a pause she surged forward towards the next group of combatants.

Before stepping forward into the melee, Sarah looked over at John. "John don't let any of them get to him." She pointed at Griff before continuing, "And no guns, unless it is absolutely necessary. We don't want stray bullets killing anyone important and making the situation we can to stop even worse." Then bending down, she pulled the combat knife from the sheath on her lower leg. As she straightened and moved forward, the blackened eight inch blade seemed to gleam in the subdued light.

John chaffed at being told to hang back while once again the women in his life did all the fighting. But he quickly saw he might really be needed here. Cameron might be cutting through their opponents' ranks like a buzz saw and eight more were vying to be the one to take down the famous Bruce Lee and three or four were battling with both Sarah and the older Jay, but that still left plenty of others approaching unhindered.

Griffin was still standing next to John and quickly turned to him. "Why did she just single me out?"

John glanced over and saw McQueen and Coburn standing just beyond Griffin trying to mentally prepare for the coming fight while keeping one eye on John and Griff. Then John turned his attention to Griff and grinned. "These guys really, really hated the movie and they are here specifically to kill you. If you get out of this alive, you seriously might want to think about a change in careers. Have you ever considered going somewhere safe and quiet and maybe writing a book?"

Panic was flaring in Griff's eyes and John's last not-so-subtle hint went completely unnoticed for the moment. "They're here to kill ME?"

John nodded, but his eyes were fixed on the fight. The first of the black-garbed karate-men had broken passed the impromptu line formed by Lee, Sarah, and the others and was rapidly approaching. John took a half step forward and had just dropped into a fighting stance when a pair of nunchaku came flying end over end seemingly from nowhere to catch the man in the back of the head. He went crashing to the ground and slid to a halt at John's feet. As John bent to retrieve the weapon he glanced in Cameron's direction. She gave a quick nod before turning back to the fight.

John straightened. It felt good to have a weapon in his hand even if the two-segmented wooden weapon wasn't his personal favorite. But then he didn't have time to think about it as four more men broke passed their first line of defense. McQueen and Coburn step up beside him forming a barrier between the approaching men and their target. The two actors were both big men, but they were going up against their opponents unarmed. John knew he needed to get them weapons and couldn't depend on Cam coming through again.

Fortunately, the first man to reach them was armed with a tonfa – a martial arts weapon from Okinawa which looked just like a side-handled police baton. A police baton was the weapon John had trained the most to defeat as he had always figured a run in with the cops was much more likely then running into a bunch of random martial arts guys with their traditional weapons. And if he was going to fight without using his gun, then a police baton was what he was most experienced with.

Hoping the guy spoke English, John stepped forward trying to throw a little fear into the guy. "Did you see the way my girlfriend crushed your boss? I taught her everything she knows." John raised his weapon, but held both shafts in his hand and didn't try any fancy maneuvers which would expose his limited skill. "If I were you, I would save my skin and start running, because things don't look too good for your side."

John took a deliberate glance passed the man's shoulder and just for a second the man looked back too. And that was all the opening John needed as he stepped forward and started to use the nunchaku as a large flail. Holding one of the sticks near its end, he swung his weapon with an overhand motion repeatedly as fast as he could. The other man got his tonfa up just in time to protect himself, but John discovered if he hit the baton with the upper end of the stick in his hand, the other end, attached via the short chain, would rotate passed and crash down on the man's head. After five repeated blows the man began to waver and John managed to use a left-handed palm strike to the nose to finally put him down.

Tossing the nanchaku to Coburn, John claimed the tonfa for himself. And just in time as the next three reached them and he no longer had time to think, just to act.

The battle raged on for several minutes. Cameron continued to flit around and seemed always able to know who was in the most immediate trouble and would benefit from her help. John, Coburn, and McQueen managed to deal with the small scattering of fighters that made it passed the others. Even Kate Jackson, the movie's young female lead who had just made the jump from Dark Shadows soap opera regular to movie star, had lent a hand, or rather a foot as she had used her pointed-toed Yves Saint Laurent shoes to good effect on a couple of the attackers.

Abruptly it was over. One minute they all seemed to be locked in combat and in the next all of the guys in the black karate uniforms were down. As John tried to catch his breathe, he took a quick look around. Everyone on their side was still on their feet. Griff was completely unharmed. Steve McQueen was sporting an ugly black eye, but was otherwise unhurt. Jimmy Coburn was cradling his right hand and appeared to have a couple of broken fingers. Sarah's lip was split and blood had run down to trickle from her chin.

Except for people gasping for breath, a moment of silence seemed to fall over the group.

Then the silence was broken by Cameron. "Damn."

They all turned towards her and saw her studying her right hand. "Damn," she said again. Her voice suddenly became harder and more menacing than anything they had heard from her. And when the person who had personally taken down more than twenty-five of the forty attackers sounded angry, it was enough to cause a shiver to run down everyone's spine. "Damn, I broke a freaking nail. Oh, someone is going to have to pay now."

Everyone had just started to relax from her apparently humorous comment when she spun around and jammed her finger in the direction of a large man standing near the corner of the cleared area by the row of chairs. "And that someone is . . . YOU!"

John took a second look at the man she was pointing at and simply knew he was a terminator – most likely the one who had hired the karate guys. Then as he watched, the terminator started to move forward in the direction of Cameron. Apparently, he was here as backup to ensure the assignment was successfully completed.

Lee, who had ended the fight near John, lifted the nunchaku he had liberated from one of the attackers after deciding the sanjiegun wasn't as effective as he had originally hoped. As he made to step passed John, the younger man put up a restraining arm.

Putting all the weight he could behind his words, John simply stated the facts. "He is out of your league. You need to let her handle this."

Then reaching into Cameron's bag, which he had managed to hang onto, John pulled out the light saber. With a shouted, 'Head's up, Cam,' he gave it an underhanded toss in her direction.

Without ever taking her eyes off the approaching terminator, Cameron reached up and snagged the weapon from mid-air. The first time John had seen her do that, he almost thought she had eyes in the back of her head. After the second time, he had asked her about it. She had explained that terminators had a low-powered short range radar system built into their sensory array. It allowed them to have a continuous 360 degree view of everything within fifty feet of them. And in practical terms, it was as good as having eyes in the back of her head.

Cameron held the weapon aloft but hadn't yet ignited it as she took a step forward. The approaching terminator faltered to a halt. John took in the expression on his face and for the first time besides Cameron he saw what could pass for emotion on a terminator's face. And what John saw was a sudden surprised recognition and then more than a hint of fear. Abruptly, the terminator began to backpedal and then turned to run. For a moment John wondered if this machine was from some more distant future – a future where Cameron and her light saber had reached true legendary status.

The terminator began to run across the wide grassy area beyond the pool and was heading for an opening between two wings of the hotel. Cameron headed off in pursuit, but at first was slowed by all the bodies strewn around. Finally, she reached the jumble of chairs and after a bound that would have made any Olympic hurdler proud she reached clear ground and began to accelerate. At once it was like the big terminator had become a classic cartoon character whose feet churned but who didn't cover any ground – so rapid was Cameron gaining on him. He had had a seventy foot lead when Cameron cleared the chairs but she had almost caught him by the time he disappeared around the corner.

Cameron disappeared around the corner barely three strides behind him and almost immediately a brilliant white flash flared into being. John knew she had fired off the light saber. The light almost instantly dropped in intensity and then flickered and flashed as she must have been swinging it around with her own shadow blocking the light from time to time.

John felt himself counting off the twenty-one seconds until the weapon's charge would be expended. Right on schedule darkness fell around that corner of the building. Five seconds later John expelled the breath he hadn't realized he had even been holding as Cameron stepped safely back into view.

They all watched in silence as Cameron walked calmly back over to the group. After she worked her way passed the overturned chairs, she started to tread her way between the fallen karate men. She was about twenty feet away when one of the men on the ground in front of her started to moan and raise himself up on his arms. With hardly a break in her stride, Cameron brought one foot down on his back right between his shoulder blades. As she applied her full three hundred fifty pound weight, the man was slammed back to the ground. Everyone heard the loud 'crack' as a rib or collar bone snapped. Cameron stepped down off the stricken man and simply continued her calm walk towards the others.

"Well, this has been a truly fun party," said Cameron with a grin when she reached the others. "We simply must do it again some time."

John felt a small matching grin begin to form on his lips. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw movement down near the corner where Cam had finished off the terminator. A half dressed man and woman were making their way out of some bushes which would have had a clear view of the spot were Cameron had used her light saber. Their faces were both frantically swinging from the spot where the final battle had occurred to where Cameron now stood by the pool. Slowly, they moved further into the open and reached a spot well-lit by one of the security lights. John saw the man was somewhere in his mid to upper twenties with short brown hair and a matching beard. And that was when he recognized him. The man who had been interrupted while fooling around in the bushes was none other than a young George Lucas.

The circle was complete.

End of Chapter 3

- - - - - - - -

Author's Note:

With the impeding Judgment Day always looming before them, terminator stories generally tend to be dark and bleak. I thought a lighter romp where the main characters could have a little fun would make a nice change-of-pace chapter. I hope you enjoyed it.

Duane


	4. Chapter 4

September 21, 2008

1963 – Chapter 4

"Ready, Lisa?" asked Cameron.

"Yes, Mom," responded the girl with more than a trace of excitement in her voice.

John looked over to where Lisa sat firmly belted into the seat beside him. He still found the situation almost impossible to believe. From his perspective it had been barely three months since he found out Cameron was pregnant. And now he had a thirteen year old daughter, who was chronologically only three years younger than himself. At this rate, she would be middle-aged before he reached his seventeenth birthday. This had to be one of the hardest to comprehend aspects of living in a world with time machines.

"John?"

Pulling his thoughts together, John realized Cameron had called his name several times. "Yeah?"

"Are you ready, John?" Cameron repeated.

John hated the almost motherly tone in her voice. But then he forced himself to remember the seriousness of the situation and the terrible price they had paid to reach this point. He gave the shoulder straps of his seat's webbing a quick tug to ensure it was tightly secured before answering in a tone he hoped would lighten the mood. "Yes, Mister Spock."

Lisa giggled for a moment as Cameron swiveled her head and flashed them a grin, showing she full understood the rationale behind John's response. Therefore, quirking one eyebrow, she said in an absolutely perfect Leonard Nimoy voice, "Very good. Then the logical course of action is to engage the warp engines."

Turning back to the control panel in front of her, Cameron pressed a series of buttons and the stolen spacecraft lifted effortlessly off its parking spot in the hanger. Grabbing the control stick, she turned the craft towards the open door and then slowly accelerated out of the building.

The 'warp engines' comment had obviously been a kidding reference to the old 'Star Trek' show, as this craft didn't have the ability to break the light-speed barrier. But it certainly was way beyond anything that should exist in 1977. According to the history John remembered, 1977 should see little manned space activity with the Americans in the lull between the end of the Apollo program and the start of the shuttle era and the Russians only lofting a handful of capsules per year. Not that John's knowledge was infallible with all the time-loops, time-branches, or whatever it was called that he had experienced. But still this craft, which looked like a cross between the Jupiter 2 from the old 'Lost in Space' TV show and a ride at the World of Tomorrow exhibit at Disneyworld, had speed and range capabilities which NASA could only dream about.

As the craft approached the door, John got a quick glimpse through one of the windows of the remains of the three terminators Cameron had slagged with her lightsaber. Seeing the melted, smoldering remains reminded John that this craft had been designed to be used by the machines. Hopefully, Cameron wouldn't inadvertently initiate an acceleration level that would instantly kill the predominately human passengers.

After passing from the interior of the well-lit building to the surrounding dark night, John could see off in the distance to the right the brilliantly lit Disneyworld Magic Castle. Somehow it seemed almost fitting that Skynet's main spacecraft assembly line would be hidden within the confines of the Magic Kingdom workshops where the animatronics figures used throughout the park were put together.

The resistance had sent scientists back to 1963 to setup an assembly line to produce time machines and plasma weapons for the ongoing battle with Skynet and its terminator minions. So it shouldn't have been a surprise Skynet would pursue a similar strategy. What had been a surprise was how in this timeline Skynet had focused on creating a space program rather than sticking to its usual strategy of terminating individuals it perceived as threats to its future existence. But then from what they had found on returning to 2008 after the mission to the Hollywood party in 1971, it did seem to have been a successful strategy. . . .

Part One - 2008

With a sizzle and a pop the energy bubble shimmered into existence; its surface covered with swirling, cascading sheets of blue lightning. Slowly the ghostly sphere of the time displacement field died away revealing the three naked forms inside - two women and a man just on the cusp between youth and adult.

For a moment John could just gasp for breath as the spasms he always experienced during a time passage continued to reign in his body. Finally, after fifteen seconds he was able to rise to a kneeling position and take a look around.

The room was familiar. They had successfully returned to their starting point – an old, long abandoned cold war era government facility in the foothills seven miles south of Twentynine Palms about three hours east of their home base in L.A. A quick glance at the windows verified they had arrived at night just as they had planned. So far, so good.

After pausing for another ten seconds in the kneeling position, the trembling in his arms and legs had receded enough that he felt ready to try standing. As he climbed to his feet, he saw that Cameron was already half dressed over by their stack of clothes. And even his mother had covered most of the intervening fifty feet from where the bubble had appeared. Why did time travel seem to affect him more than the others? Well, he could understand the difference with Cameron, but not with his mother. Was she that much tougher than him? Or were women in general less susceptible to its side effects?

Putting a hand down to modestly cover his groin, John made his way over to the others. He had just about reached them, when Cameron abruptly said, 'Damn,' and dropped into one of her blank robotic stares.

Knowing a 'damn' from Cameron usually meant imminent danger, John forgot his modesty. Quickly he grabbed his pants and struggled to get them on while scanning the room for signs of trouble as well as the exact location of their hidden cache of weapons. Not knowing when or if they would return to this site, when they had left for 1971 they had stashed their weapons. It certainly wouldn't have made sense to let their weapons fall into the wrong hands, particularly the lightsabers and plasma rifles.

"Cam, what is it?" John asked in an urgent whisper as he noticed that his mother, too, was foregoing the niceties like underwear in her rush to get ready for a potential combat situation.

Cameron sagged a little from her rigid posture as she once more seemed to be aware of her surroundings. "Sorry. There isn't any immediate danger, but we have a big problem. I think Skynet is already in control of the world."

John dropped the boot he had been struggling to get on his right foot while hopping on the other foot to maintain his balance. And for a second he thought he might follow the boot in tumbling to the floor. In his timeline, Judgment Day should still be almost forty years in the future. In Cameron's original timeline, Judgment Day was still at least four years in the future. They had gone back to 1971 to stop the termination of Thomas Griffin, which should have made things better not worse. What could have possibly gone wrong?

Before John could get over his shock, his mother did.

"What do you mean, Skynet is in control? How can you tell?"

"I can internally access commercial radio signals. I was comparing signal strengths and directions versus those I recorded immediately before our jump to 1971 to look for changes and anomalies. Before we left, six AM and five FM stations were within range. Now I am receiving eight AM signals, but no FM signals, which is enough of a difference to indicate a major change to the time line has occurred. Therefore rather than just looking at strength and direction, I started to monitor the actual signal. All eight channels are broadcasting the exact same message. Here, listen for yourselves."

Abruptly Cameron's voice changed in the same way it did when she was mimicking someone else. A rich deep baritone issued forth, but it was totally lacking in normal human warmth. With a complete absence of emotion, as though it was merely reading from an everyday grocery list, the horrific message was simply stated.

"People of Earth. Repeatedly you have been told that obedience would result in peace, prosperity, and happiness for all. Yet, you continue to destructively resist the activities of my peacekeepers. Therefore to demonstrate the futility of your actions, this evening at 8:00 P.M. the following individuals will be executed on live television. In the United States – The President, the Vice President, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Speaker of the House. In Russia – The President, the Vice President, the Prime Minister, the Director of the FSB. In Great Britain – The Queen, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In France – The President, the Prime Minister, the Chief of Staff of the Armies. In Germany – The Federal Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Federal Minister of Economics and Technology."

Here Cameron paused and then reverted to her normal voice. "The message is still continuing in the same vein. So far seventy-eight individuals in the upper echelons of governments around the world have been named."

"Shit," exclaimed Sarah in a harsh whisper as she bent down to tie the laces on her boots. "Do you understand what this means?"

Cameron nodded as she made her way over to the secret compartment where their weapons were stashed. "Skynet is trying to control the world without unleashing a nuclear holocaust, which brings to mind two things. First, what makes it feel secure enough that it isn't worried about a counter-attack? And second, with a world population of over six billion people, how can it maintain control over everyone? It would take far more troops than the fifty thousand terminators which will exist at the peak of the battle between Skynet and the resistance."

Sarah shook her head. "No, you're not getting the critical point. We have only a little over fifteen hours to figure out what is going on, find the critical nexus back in the past, and then get our asses out of here."

Cameron had already started lifting their weapons out of the newly exposed hole in the floor. She paused, tilted her head to the side for a few seconds as though deep in thought, and then she looked over at Sarah. "What is it I am missing?"

Sarah felt a smug expression start to take shape on her face, but then she suppressed it. Just because she had a better understanding of human nature then Cameron did even with her seven years among humans, this was not the time or place to feel superior. Plus from the look on John's face, he didn't fully grasp the situation either.

Taking a moment to marshal her thoughts, Sarah walked over to where Cameron still knelt on the floor. Quickly, she grabbed her hunting knife and Glock and slid them into their respective holsters. Then reaching down, she grabbed the case containing the plasma rifle in one hand and the backpack full of spare ammo with the other.

"Humans are not going to let all of their leaders be killed without putting up a fight; it isn't in their nature. And that is particularly true for the military. There is going to be a major battle before the hour of the execution arrives. Events may not be happening in the order we remember them, but I wouldn't be surprised if the nuclear war which nearly wipes out mankind happens in this timeline at about 8 PM. I may be wrong, but it seems way too likely to risk. That's why it is imperative we learn what we need to stop this version of Skynet and be out of here in the next 15 hours."

John felt a shudder run through him as he grabbed the two duffel bags which were his portion of the equipment. He had heard about Judgment Day his entire life, but it had always been somewhere off on the horizon. Now, it felt completely different knowing it might only be hours away. Suddenly he was glad Cameron had agreed to leave Lisa with Samantha back in 1971 – too many things could go wrong and they might find themselves riding out a nuclear attack. No way should a seven-year-old kid have to go through that.

"Where do we begin?" he asked, as the three of them headed to the door leading outside to where Sarah's Jeep should still be parked.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders. "Back at the house, I guess, assuming we still live in the same place. We should be able to get there by dawn and there isn't a lot of research we can do until libraries and such open."

The three of them walked along the side of the building towards its rear where the Jeep was parked in a spot which couldn't be seen from the road, not that this road which led nowhere important saw much traffic, but Sarah always tried to be cautious.

As they rounded the corner and faced east to cover the last twenty feet to where the car was parked, they all noticed it almost at once. Cameron, however, was the first to find her voice.

"Damn, that explains a lot."

Having cleared the horizon just minutes earlier and now hanging only a few degrees above the roofline of the Jeep was the newly risen moon. Based on its current position relative to the sun still well below the horizon, the moon was a narrow crescent-shape halfway between the new and first quarter phases. But with less the five seconds of observation, they had all noticed the unexpected change in its appearance. The whole North Pole region of the moon was awash in light. John had seen compilation photos of the Earth at night from satellites in orbit. Those photos had shown spots of light wherever civilization existed from a few lonely specks scattered across the Sahara Desert to the solid white of overlapping metropolitan regions such as the Washington to Boston corridor. And instantly that was what the change in the moon reminded John of – it was as though a giant city was spread for hundreds of miles across the polar region of the moon.

"Explains what?" asked John suddenly frozen in place while his gaze remained locked on the moon's northern hemisphere.

"It explains why Skynet didn't destroy mankind at its earliest opportunity. It thinks it is beyond reach. And it also explains how it can have enough troops to attempt to control the whole planet's population. I mean, look at the size of that facility, it could churn out hundreds of thousands of Terminators per week," responded Cameron.

"You really think Skynet is up there?" asked Sarah.

"Yes," Cameron answered with a ring of conviction in her voice.

"But . . . but how?" asked John. "The installation is huge. There isn't that kind of space travel technology in 2008."

"Not in your timeline or even mine," said Cameron. "But remember, we just jumped forward thirty-seven years. Thirty-seven years is a very long time, if your opponent has been dedicated to one cause for most of that time."

"But Skynet would have to be launching hundreds of rockets per day to transport the quantities of material and personnel needed to create and make efficient use of such a facility. How could it have hidden that much activity until it was ready to announce its presence?"

Cameron started to move and it seemed to break the spell which had been holding them in place ten feet short of the Jeep. "I don't know. Perhaps it sent back some 'super interplanetary drive' from the future in the same way the resistance sent back a scientist with the knowledge of how to build a time machine."

There didn't seem to be much else useful to say until they had more information. So they loaded their supplies into the back of the Jeep, climbed in, and began the three hour trek back to their home in L.A.

Part Two

Traffic had been light most of the way in the pre-dawn hours and they had made good time. It wasn't until they were within the city that traffic began to pick up. They were all on the lookout for Skynet's presence, but at least on the surface nothing had been obvious.

Pulling up to a stop three houses short of their own house in her typical cautious way, Sarah shut down the engine.

"Okay," said Sarah pulling her gun from its holster as she eased open her door. "We don't know what we are going to find, so everyone stay on your toes."

The sky was just turning a light blue in the east as the three of them reached the sidewalk. Sarah led the way with her gun held discreetly down along her thigh.

"I miss her," Cameron whispered to John.

John glanced over to where Cameron strode along beside him. Her face was calm and her eyes steadily scanned the area looking for anything out of the ordinary.

"It has only been six hours since we left her with Samantha. Certainly the two of you must have been separated for longer than this before."

Cameron nodded. "Seventeen hours, twenty-three minutes, fourteen seconds - three months ago when she was on a sleep-over with some girls from school. But somehow this is completely different. There is this feeling of emptiness inside I have never experienced before." She glanced over at John before continuing. "Is this what it felt like to you when I went to 1963 to have the baby?"

John realized his mother was pulling away from them and picked up his pace before answering. "I guess. However I knew you could take care of yourself, while Lisa is just a little kid. But if this really is Judgment Day, I think it is for the best she is somewhere relatively safe."

Cameron nodded, but then John felt her intertwine her fingers with his. He squeezed them gently as he realized this was the most intimate contact they had shared since Cameron had gone to 1963 and then returned with her emotions reset and reconfigured. A small smile graced his face.

Sarah reached the front door and inserted the keys she was still carrying in one hand into the lock. Everything was quiet and seemed normal, but with the heavy drapes they had over all the windows to keep out prying eyes, it was impossible to tell what was going on inside. Quietly twisting the key, she felt relief that it fit the lock, indicating in this timeline this probably still was their house.

Easing the door open, she found the living room was mostly dark, but there was a light on in the kitchen and she was certain they had turned off all of the lights when they had left. Lifting her left hand, she made a fist to indicate there might be trouble and with quick finger gestures, Sarah indicated John and Cameron should spread out so they could lay down covering fire, if it became necessary.

After sliding the keys into a pocket, Sarah got a solid two-handed grip on her Glock and began to move across the room towards the open doorway leading into the kitchen. Slowly she edged closer until carefully leaning to one side she could see into the room without exposing too much of her body.

A tall, dark haired man wearing a simple white tee shirt and jeans was sitting at the kitchen table facing in her general direction. An AK-47 assault rifle was spread out in pieces before him and his attention was focused on cleaning the receiver. There was something hauntingly familiar about this man, who looked a hard thirty, but Sarah was certain she had never seen him before in her life. What was he doing here? If he was with Skynet, why would he be cleaning his rifle on her kitchen table? And if this wasn't her house in this timeline, what were the odds her keys would still fit the lock or that it would belong to someone with an AK-47?

Knowing she had to find out what was going on, Sarah took a deep breath then stepped forward and leveled her gun on the man.

"Nice and easy – put your hands on top of your head."

The man looked up and smiled. "I'm glad you're back. I was beginning to think you weren't going to make it in time and I was going to have to leave without you."

The man seemed to know her, but Sarah couldn't take any chances; John was right behind her and if things went wrong he could be hurt or killed.

"Hands on top of your head," Sarah repeated putting more steel into her voice. "Now!"

The man continued to smile for a few more seconds, but then he must have seen something in her eyes. Carefully, he set down the assault rifle's receiver and the rag that had been in his other hand. Slowly, he raised his hands.

"Sarah, what is this all about?" the man asked.

Sarah took another step into the room and felt John and Cameron crowd in behind her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Cameron lower her weapon while in front of her she saw the man's jaw clench as he looked passed Sarah in Cameron's direction. At least the two of them seemed to recognize each other.

Without lowering her Glock, Sarah shot a quick glance over at Cameron. "Do you know this guy?"

"Yeah, in my timeline he is a resistance fighter John sent back from the future."

"Your timeline?" asked the man. "Sarah what is she talking about? Why are you acting like you don't know me? It's me, Reese."

When the man spoke the name, Sarah couldn't help but think of Kyle. This guy was taller with darker hair and looked almost ten years older, but something about him, particularly his voice, suddenly reminded her of Kyle.

Slowly Sarah lowered her gun, but held it down along her side in a ready position with no intention of holstering it yet; this 'Reese' might be on their side, but she wasn't willing to take any chances.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember you. We have never met in my timeline," answered Sarah.

"What is all this talk about timelines?" asked Reese as he pushed back his chair and climbed to his feet. He walked over to the refrigerator, opened the door, and pulled out a bottle of beer. He held it up offering it to Sarah, but when she shook her head 'no', he popped the top and took long swallow. Then he leaned back against the refrigerator with one eyebrow raised expectantly.

"When did you last see us? And where do you think we have been?" asked Sarah.

Reese appeared to think about it for a few seconds, but then shrugged as though he decided he was going to have to give a little information to get some in return.

"I last saw you yesterday about four in the afternoon. You were headed out to Twentynine Palms to use the time machine to go back to 1971 to prevent Skynet from killing George Black." Reese paused and took in the expression on the other three faces which indicated that none of them knew who he was talking about. "You know, the George Black who was supposed to develop the anti-matter detector which would have given the world advanced warning about what Skynet was up to?"

Sarah shook her head. "I have never heard of George Black. Yes, we went back to 1971, but it was to prevent Skynet from killing a Thomas Griffin, who was instrumental in developing the personal computer."

What had happened, wondered Sarah. It was almost as though there were two parallel universes and when they had jumped forward in time the two groups of time travelers had switched places. However, as Kyle had said on the long ago night when they had first met, 'he didn't know tech stuff'. And the same thing certainly applied for her. But whether they had jumped universes or things were just jumbled by the timeloops, it didn't really matter. This version of 2008 was where they were now and they were going to have to deal with it.

Sarah was about to ask Reese for a debriefing on the current situation in this timeline however Cameron spoke first.

"Why didn't you go with us?" asked Cameron in a cold tone that hinted at an accusation.

"Because I had my own mission to accomplish, in case yours didn't have the desired effect," snapped Reese.

Sarah glanced between Reese and Cameron and immediately realized while these two might have been forced to work together, they were nowhere near friends. And since they were from distinctly different timelines, she wondered what could have transcended that. Or was there even a common cause? But that underlying problem could wait for later. If she was right, Judgment Day was racing towards them and every second might count.

"Reese," she said sharply to force his attention back to her. "Obviously something changed while we were downtime and this is not the same present from which we left. What is the situation here? Is today Judgment Day?"

Reese continued to stare at Cameron for a few seconds. Then he took another swig from his beer. When he turned towards Sarah, some of the fire had gone out of his eyes.

"Yeah. The nukes begin to launch at 6 P.M. By seven-thirty most of the world's population will be dead."

John felt a shiver run down his spine. Then it made a right turn and settled in his gut as a dull throbbing. Judgment Day. He had never had the nearly incapacitating nightmares about it like his Mother, so perhaps it hadn't been as real for him. But now it was here. Six billion people would die in the next twelve hours or in the days and weeks to follow. The moment they had been preparing for and striving to prevent was here. Judgment Day. There was still a chance they could prevent it if they could find the critical nexus in the past and then move quickly enough. Six billion dead, but there was still time.

Glancing over at his Mother, he could see her eyes were fixed blankly on the far wall and he knew she was reliving her constant nightmare. For at least the next few minutes she was going to be worthless for when the nightmare struck it was just as incapacitating as a brutal migraine. It was going to be up to him to get things moving. And to do that, he was going to need more information on the current timeline.

"Mom, why don't you sit down for a minute?" As he spoke, he gently took her arm and led her over to one of the kitchen chairs.

"Are you going to be alright?" he asked giving her hand a squeeze.

Sarah nodded, but John could tell she was running mostly on autopilot.

"Cameron, can you make some coffee?"

When Cameron nodded, John slouched into the chair next to his mother's.

"Okay, Reese," began John trying to project some of the quiet charisma he had seen McQueen display the day before or was it now thirty-seven years before? God, time travel could mess with your head and it only seemed to get worse the more you did. Forcing himself back to the critical issue at hand, he continued. "Assume we don't know anything that has happened with regards to Skynet in the last forty years. Give us a five minute summary so we can figure out how to proceed."

Reese returned to his original seat, set down his beer, and picked up the cleaning cloth he had been using on the assault rifle. "Okay, let's start at the beginning. Well, since the beginning is technically somewhere up in the future, let's not start there but rather at the first point where Skynet's activities came to notice in the past.

"The resistance doesn't know how far back in time Skynet started its effort to take control of the world. Its activities first came to light in 1977, but things had to have started years and years earlier.

"The first public hint came when amateur astronomers spotted lights near the north pole of the moon. At first there were only a few lights in one small crater, but over time they steadily spread. Now since we are talking the moon and not some truly faraway place like Mars or the moons of Jupiter, it didn't take a world class telescope to spot the structures springing up in that area.

"Everyone's first thought was that this mysterious installation had to belong to one of the superpowers. Plus the fact the military had to have spotted it before an amateur with a backyard telescope seemed to reinforce they were covering it up. But both America and the old Soviet Union quickly and vehemently denied any involvement.

"People were still clamoring about a cover up until old Doctor Wernher von Braun of Apollo fame pointed out it would take approximately three hundred Saturn 5 launches to lift just the visible portions of the installation to the moon. When he asked how someone could have launched and continued to launch on such a massive scale without being noticed, he shut everyone up who claimed the governments were behind it.

"If the government wasn't behind it, it didn't leave too many possible explanations. The one which swept the world and held sway for a number of years was aliens. And it was certainly reinforced by the almost countless UFO sightings.

"Of course, we now know many of the UFO sightings were, in fact, Skynet's crafts busily shuttling materials to the moon."

As he sat there listening, the UFO comment clicked in John's head with what Reese had said had been their mission to 1971 in this timeline. Quickly he interrupted the older man's monologue. "Reese, does anti-matter have something to do with Skynet's spaceships?"

Reese nodded. "Yeah, from what the resistance was able to put together up in the future, anti-matter is the primary power source for the spaceships and probably the installation on the moon, although in the last couple of years before I traveled back here what looked like giant solar arrays were being assembled in lunar orbit."

"If Skynet has anti-matter, why would it need solar power?" asked John.

Reese gave a helpless shrug indicating he had no idea.

Before John could turn the conversation to another topic, Cameron walked up with a steaming cup of coffee which she set before Sarah before sliding into the chair next to John's. Then Cameron answered John's question.

"Skynet needs the solar power to create the anti-matter." Cameron said. Taking in the quizzical expression on John's face she continued. "Anti-matter is not naturally available, at least not in the inner portion of the solar system; you have to make it. And it takes a lot of energy to create it. A lot of energy."

"Then why bother?" asked John.

"Because anti-matter is the most dense energy source known. One pound of anti-matter has the equivalent energy of a 21 megaton hydrogen bomb. Minute quantities that can be easily sent back through the time displacement devices could power a large facility for years."

Keying in on her comment about the hydrogen bomb, John asked. "Anti-matter bombs? Are they possible? Could one by used to destroy Skynet's lunar facility?"

"Anti-matter bombs are certainly possible, but they are extremely risky. Fission or Fusion bombs are very difficult to initiate as you need high pressures or high temperatures or some combination of the two to start the chain reaction. They simply do not naturally want to explode, which makes them easy to safeguard. I mean in over sixty years there is no record of one ever going off accidentally.

"But anti-matter is a completely different beast. Any contact with normal matter will start a reaction – any contact. To prevent interaction with normal matter, special containment fields must always be maintained. And if they fail for even an instant – BOOM! It doesn't matter whether your intended usage is a bomb or simply a power source. If the containment system fails, you can get a catastrophic event."

"You seem to know an awful lot about anti-matter," remarked John.

Cam shrugged. "Just one of the bits of data that has been sitting in my memory system since I was first activated at the Skynet production facility."

John pondered what Cameron had said for a few seconds and his thoughts kept circling back to her comment about a compact energy source. "Cameron, are you powered by anti-matter?"

"No," she answered with a shake of her head. "It would involve way too much energy or not enough energy depending on your perspective."

When she recognized to look of incomprehension of John's face, she expanded. "My power source needs to provide one hundred fifty thousand mega joules of energy over a twenty-five year time span. The amount of anti-matter needed to provide that much energy would have the explosive power of 35.85 tons of TNT. Even Skynet couldn't risk having thousands of terminators running around that could each wipe out the equivalent of eight to ten city blocks, if their power cells were ruptured."

"It takes that much power to run your body?" asked John with an incredulous tone.

"Actually, it is only about double the energy used by a human body over the same twenty-five year period. It is just that for the human body you are used to thinking units of calories rather than joules and usually in terms of calories per day rather than calories per twenty-five years."

"But still, thirty-five tons of TNT!"

"Well, if the mechanical terminator part of my body could be recharged every day like my human part is with food, it wouldn't be a big deal. But there aren't any handy power outlets available up in the post-Judgment Day future, so Skynet went for a self-contained power solution."

"So if it isn't anti-matter, what is your power source?" asked John.

"Fusion," answered Cameron. "I have a small fusion generator for my basic power needs. It generates a constant two hundred watts of power. I also have several capacitors to store extra energy for high power demand activities like running, lifting heavy weights, and combat. When my power needs are low like just sitting here now, the excess power is shunted to the capacitors."

The only thing John knew about fusion was that it was involved in hydrogen bombs and that didn't sound a whole lot safer than anti-matter.

"If your fusion generator is damaged, won't it also explode with a force of seventy thousand pounds of TNT?" he asked as he subconsciously slid his chair back a few inches further away from Cameron's.

Cameron shook her head. "No, two grams of Deuterium and two grams of Tritium are the fuel supply. And by themselves they have no tendency to explode. To get them to implode and release energy, you have to raise their temperature to about one hundred million degrees. Oh, a tenth of a microgram is at that temperature in the generator's toroid at any given time, but if it is ruptured, the reaction would immediately stop and the microgram of plasma would merely melt down most of the generator before cooling. So you don't have to worry about some big explosion if my power supply takes a direct hit."

Getting the conversation back to the subject at hand, John asked. "Since fusion sounds so much safer than anti-matter, why doesn't Skynet just use it to power its spaceships?"

"As I said, my power supply generates a steady two hundred watts. That is plenty to power a terminator, but at least three or four orders of magnitude less than what you would need to power a spaceship. A fusion generator is extremely difficult to fabricate and can only be built up in the future. After scaling it up to the size you would need for a spaceship, it would be impossible to fit it inside a living body to get it through the time displacement device. That's why Skynet has been forced to go with the much more dangerous anti-matter for its spaceships. It is extremely difficult and costly to create, but that part can be done up in the future where the technology is more advanced. However the hardware for extracting the power from the anti-matter is relatively simple to fabricate and can easily be created here or even back in the 1970's."

Then Cameron ended her little science class with a grin. "So, since I am never going to explode like a hydrogen or anti-matter bomb, you don't really need to scoot your chair any further away."

John nodded a little sheepishly and then reached his arm around Cam's waist and pulled her closer. She didn't resist and even raised her hand and allowed her fingers to caress the side of his neck. For a moment John allowed himself to wallow in the memories of a time when she touched him like this on a regular basis. But then he forced himself to remember this was Judgment Day and he needed to stay focused.

He looked over at Reese and for a second wondered if there was any significance that the man had the same name as his father. But just like Cam's caress, thinking about the identity of this man needed to wait until later.

"It seems like stopping Skynet from developing the lunar facility is the best way to stop this version of Judgment Day. Reese, do you know the time and place of the original staging area for Skynet's operations? It would seem best to nip its project at the source."

Reese shook his head. "The resistance hasn't been able to uncover that information. We have found no records indicating any activity before the installation was first noticed in 1977. However from the rapid pace of the initial construction, our scientists are convinced Skynet was already staging materials from at least four different locations. Most probably they were all in the United States or Western Europe as a lot of high-tech equipment would have been needed and it is always simpler to be able to buy most of what you need rather than build everything from scratch."

Somehow John knew in his heart the solution wouldn't be as simple as going back in time and have Cam do her lightsaber thing on a handful of terminators.

"Does the resistance know where at least one of their bases is in 1977? If so, we could try stealing one of their ships and then destroying the lunar base while it is still a manageable size. That should, at a minimum, postpone Judgment Day for awhile."

"Destroy the lunar base?" asked Reese with a look of disbelieve on his face. "How could we possibly do that?"

"With an anti-matter bomb," answered John while trying to maintain a calmer expression than what he was actually feeling inside. "So do you know where one of its Earthside bases is?"

Reese still had an expression on his face that implied he thought John must be crazy, but after a moment, he answered. "Not back then, but I do know Skynet's center of operations in the L.A. area in the present is inside Disneyland."

"Then that's where we need to go," interjected Cameron. "Do you know the location of an entry point to Skynet's facility within the park?"

When Reese nodded, she continued. "Good, I think I can get us through the first level of security. Once we are inside we will need to acquire two things. First is access to the internal network to discover information on the location of one of its original bases, the security protocols in place at the time, and instructions on how to fly one of its ships."

When she paused, Reese glanced briefly at John and then asked, "And the second thing?"

"We will also need to acquire an anti-matter bomb."

"I don't remember Skynet ever using an anti-matter weapon," stated John. "Does it just have them laying around, but then never uses them?"

Cameron shook her head. "No, but as I said earlier, anti-matter is nasty stuff. Any sample you have will behave like a bomb if you turn off its containment field. With the setup Skynet appears to have in place here in 2008, I am certain it is using anti-matter to power some of its facilities and of course there is the fleet of spaceships it is also powering. If the Skynet facility under Disneyland is its hub of operations in this area, I would bet it is also a transshipping location for anti-matter being sent back from the future."

"What size containers are we talking about?" asked John.

"Small, I would think. Most likely there is a standard design, probably about the size of a Coke can which can be carried through the time displacement field inside a terminator's body. Even allowing for the necessary containment field hardware and electronics, a Coke can sized device should still be able to hold enough anti-matter to have an explosive yield in the same range as a Hiroshima class nuclear bomb. And that should be plenty to take out the lunar facility that existed in 1977."

John glanced over at Reese who sat there slowly shaking his head.

"Let me get this straight," said Reese as he looked from Cameron to John and back again. "You want to break into Skynet's main facility, rummage through its electronic records, and steal an anti-matter bomb. And you expect to plan and execute this," and he paused to glance at the clock on the wall over the sink. "In less then ten hours and fifteen minutes."

John felt a stupid grin forming on his face. "No, actually we need to do it in substantially less then ten hours and fifteen minutes. You forgot the part about getting clear of Disneyland and then reaching one of the time machines before the nukes start going whump, whump, whump."

"And," added Cameron, "we also need time to implant the anti-matter bomb into someone's body before we can take it through the time machine."

The smile on John's face faded. He had forgotten for the moment about needing to have the device surrounded by living tissue before it could go through the time displacement device. Shit.

Cameron must have read the expression on John's face. "Since I am the Terminator, I suppose I better volunteer to carry the bomb. However I was not designed with that mission in mind. My sub-dermal nanotube layer is very difficult to penetrate and it may take extra time and the right tools."

"Nanotube layer?" asked John, wondering what she was talking about, as she had never mentioned anything about it before.

Cameron shrugged. "You know I am different than most terminators. I was the prototype for the next generation, which would have a full set of human organs. Well, after having Lisa, you are fully aware about that part."

"Lisa?" asked Reese.

"My daughter," answered Cameron.

John watched the startled expression appear on the older man's face. Obviously in his timeline Lisa had never existed.

But quickly John turned his attention back to Cam as she continued to speak.

"Anyway, if the human portion of the new terminators was going to survive in the rough-and-tumble world of combat, it was going to need some additional protection. Skynet managed to modify the human genetic sequence to cause a mesh of carbon nanotubes to form at the boundary between the dermis and the hypodermis layers of the skin. It is only three hundredths of an inch thick and has a sufficiently coarse weave to allow blood vessels and nerve fibers to pass through, but to large items like bullets or knife blades it has the equivalent stopping power of about five inches of Kevlar. So since one of its primary purposes is to stop knife attacks, it is very difficult to penetrate even intentionally."

Ever since John had known about her human internal organs, he had wondered about her ability to shake off bullet wounds. Now he finally knew.

"Any other little secrets you feel like divulging?" John asked.

"Not at this time," she responded with the little smile John had come to understand meant there was probably a lot more about her gifts and abilities she might one day reveal.

For almost a minute they sat there in silence until John realized the clock was still ticking. Quietly, John leaned over and shook his mother's arm. "Mom, we need to go. If we leave now, we should reach Disneyland about the time they open. We can make our plans while we are on the road."

Sarah still had a somewhat glazed look about her eyes and John wasn't sure how much of the previous conversation had even registered with her while she had been trapped in her personal waking nightmares about Judgment Day, but she took a couple of deep breathes and then rubbed her eyes for a moment. When she lowered her hands, some of the brightness had returned to her eyes, as it seemed to do whenever a life-and-death struggle was imminent.

"Yeah, let's do it," she said while rising to her feet.

____

Part Three

"Can I take off my head?" asked the muffled voice of John. "Please?"

Cameron glanced around the area and nodded. Then not certain how well he could see her, she leaned in close and spoke into his big floppy ear. "Yes, it should be okay here."

John's hands, enclosed in oversized three-fingered mittens, reached up and rotated his large dog's head left and right a couple of times before the catch released and he could lift the costume's head up and away to expose his own. With nowhere to set it, he tucked the large plastic and black felt covered head under his left arm.

As he reached up with his right hand to use the glove to mop at the sweat which covered his forehead and had been annoyingly dripping into eyes, he heard a snicker from his right.

Glancing over, John said with more than a hint of annoyance in his voice. "Reese, after all of your whining and moaning when you were putting on your pirate's costume, I don't need any shit from you right now. Unless, of course, you want to swap, as it looks a lot more pleasant to be a Caribbean pirate, even with the extravagant mascara, than being stuck inside this costume."

"Sorry," answered Reese attempting a serious tone, but unable to fully suppress a chuckle that set the rings embedded in his dreadlock laced wig and beard to jingling.

John looked the others over again and couldn't suppress a smile of his own at the ridiculousness of the situation. Here they were invading Skynet's secret lair, which was probably one of the most dangerous spots on the planet, doubtlessly filled with hordes of killer terminators, and they were all dressed as Disney characters. First, there was Reese in the full-on Johnny Depp inspired pirate's regalia. Next was himself in the Goofy costume – why did it have to be Goofy rather than Pluto or one of the other characters, who was less . . . well, less goofy? And then there were the girls, who had faired better in the costume department, at least in terms of looking good if not in terms of being dressed for combat.

Cameron was dressed, no, way over-dressed, as Belle from 'Beauty and the Beast'. She was in a flowing golden gown stretched over a hoop skirt so wide its like couldn't have been seen since the days of 'Gone with the Wind'. The gown was covered with layer upon layer of glittering sequins from the off the shoulder sleeves to the lowest exposed ivory petticoat. Of course, this was Disneyland so ultimately there was nothing risqué about the costume other than a few subtle hints.

But the one who was truly shining was Sarah. Oh, the character's personality didn't match her in the slightest, but the costume looked like it had been designed specifically for her. She was in a long, slinky black satin dress that suited her much better than the evening gown she had been wearing barely twelve hours earlier at the 1971 Hollywood party. However this dress was so tight and form-fitting, it would be impossible to run or fight in, not that the costume's candy apple red shoes with the nearly five inches heels would make running fun anyway. Over the black dress, Sarah was wearing a floor-length all white faux mink coat with a red silk lining, which accented the black dress, the red shoes and the matching red silk gloves. The only things that detracted from Sarah's natural beauty were the twelve inch black cigarette holder in her right hand and the half black, half white wig on her head. Still, at first glance, with her tall athletic body Sarah made an absolutely stunning Cruella de Vil.

"Come on, we need to hurry and locate an access terminal before we are discovered," stated Cameron as she glided off in a decidedly regal manner.

Sarah immediately set off after Cameron. And while Cameron walked like a mythical Princess, Sarah's stiletto heels and extremely tight gown forced her to use short rapid steps with one foot crossing over the other like a supermodel on a fashion-show runway.

The two men watched the women for a moment, shared a quick glance, and then trailed along behind. Reese managed the easy swagger of a movie pirate while John carefully restored the hated dog's head over his own.

From the small alcove where they had momentarily sheltered, they stepped out into a long corridor located deep under the central Matterhorn Mountain. This was the only entrance into the secret Skynet facility that Reese had known about. Realizing if they ran into trouble, it would be almost impossible to fight their way clear, they had decided on the need for disguises. Their only hope was that some of Skynet's minions were seeded around the park in costume and that they might remain in costume even in the Skynet controlled portions of the facility. Therefore when they had arrived at Disneyland a little over an hour before the park's opening time, they had proceeded directly to the employee parking area. There they had waylaid four employees for their badges and had proceeded into the park in search of the changing area for employees who strolled the park in character.

After seventy-five feet the corridor terminated in a Tee. Without any pretense of stealth, Cameron swept around the corner to the right as though she owned the place. The others were a little more hesitant, but didn't have any choice but to follow her lead. Suddenly, they found themselves in a much more active area, but to their relief the first person they met was also in costume. A very tall, six-foot, six-inch Abraham Lincoln came striding in the opposite direction. From the fake, plastic look of its face to the equally fake look of its hands, it had to be a terminator, or if not an actual killing machine, at least a close relative.

Lincoln strode by without giving them a single glance. They all, or at least the three humans, gave a small sigh of relief – perhaps this strategy might work.

They passed through a large room where bare skeletal machines were being outfitted with clothes and fake body parts. More than half of them seemed to be former Presidents, so the Hall of History must have been one of their more important displays. And since none of these were covered with human skin, John realized, it strongly implied they were of local manufacture rather than having been brought back from the future. But then he remembered the giant Skynet facility on the moon. Since Skynet could produce as many machines as it wanted here, there probably wasn't any need to go to the expense of making them all able to pass for human.

There were several exits on the far side of this workshop area and Cameron without hesitation headed to the leftmost one. John wondered if she knew where she was going or just pretending she did.

The next corridor was quieter, but John could now hear the hum of computer equipment. Perhaps Cameron's more sensitive hearing had picked up the sound earlier and that had led her to select this corridor.

Cameron spared a quick glance into every room they passed, but wasn't until the fifth doorway that she actually paused for a moment and then stepped inside. The others quickly followed and then Reese quietly eased the door closed behind them.

They were inside some kind of control room. While the others gazed around, Cameron stepped up to a terminal and started typing faster than was humanly possible. John quickly joined her and watched schematics and other data scroll across the screen so fast it was almost a blur. And once again John found himself wishing he hadn't grown up in a version of the timeline where personal computers had never developed. He definitely needed to find some time for Cameron to help him get more proficient with the machines.

Cameron typed for almost fifteen seconds, paused to study the screen for about ten seconds, and then typed another rapid sequence. After studying the data flashing across the screen for another ten seconds, she typed a final brief string and a floor plan of the facility was displayed on the screen.

"This control room dates back to the days before Skynet took control of the below ground infrastructure of Disneyland. I can access a lot of the less sensitive data from here, but not the information we need about the spaceships or information about Skynet's activities further back in time. To access that data is going to require jacking my neural network directly into the system."

She paused to bring up her hand and point to a spot on the screen. "We are here. The most obscure location I can find to access the network is here." And she point to a spot off to the right side of the map. "And the anti-matter storage facility is over here." And she pointed to a spot on the left side of the display. "I think we are going to have to split into two teams. John and I will go for the data we need while Sarah and Reese go for the anti-matter."

"Agreed," said Sarah. "But we will need more detailed instructions on how to find the location and how to recognize an anti-matter container when we get there."

Cameron nodded and then glanced around the room. She quickly spotted an old printer in the corner. She moved over, studied the connections on its back, and then turned it on. She walked back over to the terminal, typed for a few seconds, and then the old dot-matrix printer began to print with a ripping sound that seemed almost deafening in the long unused control room.

While the printer continued to work, Cameron brought up another image on the display. "The anti-matter containers are a little larger than my original estimate. They are cylindrically shaped, but closer in size to a tennis ball container than a coke can. Fortunately, they are labeled with both barcodes as well as the more standard RFID chips. Here is a sample of the barcode you need to look for."

Reese pulled a black felt tip pen from his pocket and moved to copy the pattern onto his arm to be sure they found the right canister.

"Here, let me do that," said Cameron.

Reese handed her the pen. He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and they could all see the barcode which was already permanently laser-burned into his forearm.

His existing barcode didn't seem to have any impact on Cameron, unlike the others. As she worked, John asked. "Is that the barcode from one of Skynet's prison camps? My Mom has told me about the one my father had, but I have never seen one."

Reese gave a cryptic glance towards Sarah before responding. "Yeah, anyone who has ever been caught by Skynet has one of these."

John tried to imagine what life in a Skynet prison camp would be like. Images of Nazi concentration camps quickly filled his head. But then he realized Skynet's had to be even worse. It didn't want to just exterminate one race. No, it wanted to wipe out every last human on the planet.

John was about to ask more about the prison camps when Cameron straightened up.

"All done."

John had barely taken in how the row of wide and narrow lines looked as geometrically perfect as the nearby Skynet tattoo before his Mom started towards the door.

"Come on guys, the clock is ticking. The longer we are in this facility, the greater the risk something will go wrong and the closer we get to the six p.m. departure deadline."

Reese nodded and pulled down his sleeve as he moved towards the door. Cameron paused just long enough to close down the computer system and shut off the monitor before she followed the others from the room.

Cameron and John followed Sarah and Reese for about a minute before the others turned down a hallway leading off to the left. Cameron and John kept going straight for another twenty yards before Cameron indicated a corridor to their right with a nod of her head.

When they rounded the corner and found the new hallway as empty as the last, John asked. "It has been bugging me since you first mentioned it this morning. Do you truly only consume the same energy as a pair of 100 watt light bulbs?"

Cameron nodded. "Under normal circumstances the answer is yes. Sometimes having machines design each subsequent generation of machines is a huge advantage. With very efficient motors and extremely low coefficient of friction bearings in the joints, my power requirements at this moment while I am walking and talking is 152 watts."

John shook his head. "Some of the things I have seen you do seem simply amazing. And to find out you can due it on less than 200 watts of power. Wow."

"Well, as I mentioned, I do have some surge capability when the situation warrants it. With my reserve system completely charged, I can increase my available power to thirteen hundred watts for twenty-seven minutes."

"I don't understand," responded John, "Why you don't maintain a higher energy flow from your fusion generator? I mean it sounds like you could easily carry many times the amount of Deuterium and Tritium fuel you described."

"Yeah, I could have a higher output energy system, as some of the earlier models did, but it comes down to a question of power management. Whenever I am using less than 200 watts, like now, the excess power is shunted off to the reserve energy units. Of course, the reserve system can only store so much energy. Once that limit is reached, the energy has to go somewhere. Usually the simplest solution is to turn the excess power into heat.

"And that was one of the big problems with the early terminator series. They generated a constant maximum thirteen hundred watts of power. When they were trying to be stealthy and were only consuming a few watts, they dumped so much excess heat they glowed as bright as bonfires when viewed with infrared goggles. Therefore with later models Skynet began to emphasize power management to minimize thermal output to make them more effective infiltration units."

As he listened, John had been trying to scan through the eye openings in Goofy's head for potential problems. But the import of what Cameron had just said almost forced him to pause. Quickly he tried to burn the key point into his long term memory: 'Early terminators could be easily spotted with thermal imagers.' Hopefully, they would be successful in preventing Judgment Day, but if not, then every scrap of information might turn out to be important in the Resistance's war against Skynet.

John and Cameron reached an area with more activity and proceeded in silence. After about five minutes of walking they once again found themselves in a long empty corridor.

"Since we have been talking about power management," began Cameron. "I have been monitoring my power consumption more closely than normal. Ever since we returned to 2008, my neural network has been consuming more power than it typically did before. At first it was just under two extra watts, but it has slowly been climbing and is now a little over three extra watts. The only significant difference in my mental processes seems to be related to Lisa. Part of my mind seems to be stuck in a loop trying to decide if leaving her behind was the right thing to do and it keeps spinning out endless scenarios showing how everything could go wrong due to that decision. Was it the wrong decision? Is my neural network developing some kind of instability?"

John felt a strong urge to reach out and wrap his arm around her waist, but between her wide hoop skirt and his dog costume, it was impossible. So he was forced to settle for just reaching out his left mitten-covered hand and clasping her right hand.

"We made the right decision to leave her behind," John said firmly. Then he softened his tone before continuing. "It is perfectly natural to worry about big decisions and it is normal human nature to try to second guess our decisions."

Cameron looked in his direction for several seconds. John had no idea what she could hope to see in his face with it completely hidden by the costume, but finally she answered. "So, this is normal?"

John gave an exaggerated nod to be sure she saw it through the large dog's head.

"Well, it sucks," she continued. "I still have my earliest memories and way back then everything seemed so simple, so black and white. But now, every decision I make opens up a myriad of choices and each new choice in turn leads to another whole set of permutations. Sometimes I feel like I am going to be overwhelmed."

"As I said, welcome to the human race, Cam. Everyone has those feelings. You just have to learn to deal with them. Sometimes it helps to focus on the present since there is nothing you can do to change things with Lisa at the moment."

They walked in silence for a few seconds.

"Okay, I'll try," answered Cameron in a small voice John barely heard. Then with hardly a pause she continued in her more normal tone of voice as though some mental switch had been thrown. "We're here."

Cameron led the way into a room off the right side of the passage. John wasn't sure what he was expecting, but not this. The room was barely bigger than a closet. To get the door closed behind him, he had to push harder than he really wanted to against Cameron's broad skirt. They still might need these disguises for a long time and he didn't want to bend any of the hoops that maintained the skirt's shape.

Once the door was closed and he had found the light switch, John took time to remove Goofy's head. Finally, he was able to give the room a more detailed inspection, which didn't reveal any mysterious deep, dark secrets. One wall was almost completely covered with a variety of small switches which fed into a large mass of cables that disappeared through a large opening in the ceiling. The other walls were bare and not even completely finished. They were just drywalled and taped, but had never been painted.

Not seeing any computer terminals or monitors like in the room they had just come from, John asked. "What is this place? And how do you interface with the system?"

Cameron pointed to a white six inch wide by nine inch tall panel, which was set into the wall near the large bank of switches. It was nearly the color of the drywall and John hadn't noticed it during his initial inspection of the room.

"This is one of three data closets where Skynet's systems interface with the existing Disneyland wiring. It is in the most obscure, least frequented area, plus it is the only one that has a neural interface."

"The panel?" asked John. "I thought you were going to have to jack into the system."

"You mean like stick a wire into a port in my arm or head? With the requirement of unbroken living tissue to pass through the time displacement device, a physical port would have to be buried beneath the skin and the skin cut every time you needed to access it. Oh, I do have several ports like that, but an electro-magnetic induction field is a much cleaner solution."

Cameron paused to raise her right hand and place it on the white panel. Almost instantly the panel began to glow a faint pale blue.

"I'm in," announced Cameron, as her eyes fluttered shut and a vacant expression spread across her face.

John had no idea how long it would take Cameron to penetrate the network and locate the information they needed. There were probably important, urgent things he should be focused on to increase their chances of surviving the next few hours, but instead he found himself staring at Cameron's face. He had an almost overpowering urge to run a finger tip lightly across her high cheekbone and then down across her perfect lips. Everything had changed since Cameron's return from 1963 with her emotions reset and her memories of their time together reduced to just cold, hard facts. And with her minimal need for sleep, this was almost the first time in the intervening month where John had been able to stare at her to his heart's content without raising questions they weren't yet ready to address on a verbal level.

As with most pleasurable things in John's life, this opportunity to indulge himself ended much too quickly. In less than forty-five seconds, Cameron's eyes popped open and stared straight back at John's. After a few seconds she tilted her head slightly to the right in the characteristic way she did whenever she seemed to thinking hard about something. Their gazes remained locked for a few more seconds and then Cameron pulled her hand away from the interface panel.

"Come on, let's go," she said gesturing towards the closed door. "I have gotten everything I can without raising any security flags."

"Did you get what we needed?" asked John, as he cautiously opened the door an inch to peer out into the corridor.

Determining the hall was still vacant John started sliding his dog's head back into place as Cameron answered.

"Not everything, but hopefully enough."

"What does that mean?" asked John in a muffled whisper as he stepped out into the corridor.

"Skynet has high level security blocks in place on all historical information. I guess it has learned the importance of keeping some things well guarded in a world where time travel is possible. So I couldn't determine where its earliest activities in this timeline took place. I think we are stuck with Reese's intel about 1977 and we are still going to have to stop Skynet there.

"However, most of Skynet's current operations were accessible. Assuming they haven't changed significantly in the last thirty years, I do have the technical and operational specifications for its spaceships. Also I know where Skynet's most active spaceport in the United States is currently located and it would be a good guess that it was also one of the earliest spaceports."

"Where?" asked John, as he followed Cameron.

"Disneyworld in Florida."

"Why all the connections to Disney?"

Cameron shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe the Skynet in this timeline was weaned on the old movies." Then she grinned. "I know seeing an elephant fly had a profound affect on me."

____

Part Four

John watched as Cameron, in her guise as Belle, posed with a gracious smile for a photo with what had to be at least the thirtieth group of park visitors. He, too, had posed for some photos, but he wasn't half as popular as Cameron. Of course, even without the Goofy costume, he wouldn't be nearly as photogenic. And perhaps it was just as well he was hidden under the all-concealing suit for he certainly would be struggling about now to maintain the easy smile Cameron was projecting.

The two of them had exited the underground portion of the Disneyland facility almost ninety minutes earlier and had been forced to loiter in the immediate area waiting for his Mother and Reese to make a similar appearance. Sarah had long schooled him that doing things the stealthy way typically took a lot longer, but knowing it didn't help his nerves. He knew they might have been forced to wait for activity at their target site to die down, but he wished he had some way of knowing what was going on. Surely if they had been captured, something noticeable should have happened out here, too.

Well, something noticeable was going on, but John didn't think it had anything to do with their activities. No, what he was noticing was the expression on many of the adults' faces. During the drive to Disneyland, they had heard traffic reports describing heavy, stop-and-go traffic on all of the roads leading out of Los Angeles. Nothing had been overtly said, but obviously a lot of people felt in their bones that big trouble was coming as a result of the execution announcement and they were trying to escape.

And from the looks in most of the eyes here, a lot of the adults in the park had the same misgivings. But perhaps these were the truly smart ones, John thought, as they had realized the futility of running and had decided instead to spend their remaining time with their children trying to have one last day of fun.

Then, even though he had been waiting for what seemed like forever, John was still startled when the door he had been watching opened with a loud 'bang'. Immediately his Mom and Reese came stumbling out of the dark interior. And it didn't take more than a moment to notice the large crimson stain down the side of Sarah's white mink coat nearest to Reese. John knew one of them had been shot, but from the way they clung together it wasn't instantly obvious which one it was.

They hadn't taken more than three steps out into the open when Sarah half turned and fired two shots back through the open doorway using the Glock held in her free right hand. And the resulting grimace and half stumble on Reese's part revealed it was the older man in the pirate suit who had taken the hit somewhere along the way during their escape from the Skynet facility.

John wasn't more than forty feet away, standing off to one side, but it was nearly impossible to make a move in their direction. As between their positions was the large crowd that had gathered around Cameron in her 'Belle' costume. Now, as a result of the sound of gunshots and a distinct explosive 'whump' sound from whatever Sarah had been shooting at, children were screaming and some parents were trying to get their families down to the ground while others were trying to run away. Cameron was temporarily trapped with a girl in her arms, who looked to be only a year or two younger than her own daughter, Lisa.

John was sure his Mom must have spotted Cameron and himself, but there was no way she could quickly get clear of the door by forcing her way through the crowd while helping the injured Reese. Therefore after only a glance in their direction, she headed the opposite way, towards the 'It's a Small World' attraction, as it was the shortest route to get some substantial structure between them and whatever was following her. As she half dragged Reese, John could see she had sacrificed the high heels somewhere along the way and had torn, almost to the waist, the seam in her tight gown so she could move her legs freely.

John turned and ran in the opposite direction while simultaneously trying to get Goofy's head off. Twenty yards in front of him was the large garbage bin where they had stashed their heavy ordinance. It suddenly looked like they were going to need everything they had brought with them.

He should have covered the distance to the garbage dumpster in less than five seconds and would have, if not for the encumbering costume. In the end it took him nearly ten seconds. After pulling the large satchel free, he decided he better get rid of the suit, now that it had served its purpose and before it slowly him down at some more critical junction.

Fortunately, they had taken the time when they had first selected this costume to do up the back with just a few pins, so with one sharp tug the costume came apart and dropped down around his knees. As he worked his feet free, he looked back over his shoulder. His Mom and Reese were just clearing the corner of the structure when a steady stream of dead Presidents came pouring out of the doorway like fire ants from a disturbed mound. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Kennedy, Teddy Roosevelt and a swarm of others he didn't immediately recognize came racing out, most of them brandishing guns of one sort or another.

Hurriedly, John pulled his share of the weapons from the bag and then, after catching Cameron's eye, he tossed the lightened duffle as hard as he could in her direction.

Without pausing to see how close the bag had come to reaching her, he dropped to a kneeling position, grabbed the M72 LAW rocket launcher, extended the tube, flipped up the sight, and pivoted in the direction of the presidents. As he had practiced a hundred times during training with his mother, he took a calming breath, sighted squarely on the back of the lead machine, who happened to be wearing the Kennedy face, and pressed the firing stud on the weapon's upper surface. As the rocket exited the tube with a loud whoosh, John suddenly thought of the old T-850 terminator that had shown up in his youth. And thinking of the T-850 brought memories of its penchant for bad one-liners. And perhaps that is why John found himself whispering, 'Fuck you, Mister President.'

While the rocket was still crossing the thirty-five yards separating John's firing position from his target, John had already dropped the spent launcher, grabbed up the plasma rifle and his Glock, and started sprinting towards the Mad Tea Party ride. That location would give him some cover as well as separate him enough from Cameron so the field put out by the plasma weapon wouldn't damage her neural network. He hadn't gotten more than three steps, when looking over his shoulder he saw the rocket detonate squarely in the back of the Kennedy robot, utterly ripping it apart and knocking the next four nearest presidents to the ground.

John heard shots and then screams as the remaining Presidents still standing followed the smoke trail left by the rocket and began firing in his direction and indiscriminately hitting people in the crowd between John and their position. John crouched lower and started to jink left and right as he ran. Judging his distance from Cameron's position to be sufficient, he jammed the pre-start button on the plasma rifle beginning the twelve second process of mixing the two volatile chemicals which were the power source for the gun. The chemical cartridge would power the gun for ten shots or twenty-four seconds, whichever came first, before it would be expended and need to be replaced. But twenty-four seconds was probably more than he could stay in one firing position anyway before the terminators would have him zeroed.

John was just hurtling the fence at the perimeter of the Tea Cup ride when a much larger explosion than the rocket he had fired shook the area and slammed him into the ground. Quickly, he rolled to his stomach as he saw the two chemicals in his weapon change to red. Pointing the weapon back towards the group of Presidents, he saw a massive hole had been blown into the light fiberglass side of the nearest wall of the mountain. Right in front of it were the mangled bodies of at least six or seven of the machines. He let out a little sigh of relief when he realized the explosion had been caused by the block of C4 explosive which had been in the bag he had tossed to Cameron.

Scanning the crowd scattered on the ground between him and the Presidents, he easily spotted Cameron in her brilliant gold gown. She was stretched out protectively over a group of children. The duffle bag was on the ground at her side and she had a Glock in each hand. She was steadily firing a pair of rounds alternately from each gun and John knew she was taking out the terminators' optical sensors to slow them down.

Quickly, John got down to business with his heavier weapon. A head shot would be best as it would destroy the terminators' neural processors, but with so many targets, John didn't have time for that much finesse. And a plasma bolt through the chest would put the machines out of commission long enough for their current purposes. John sighted on his first target, a machine with a rubber version of Ronald Reagan's face, and pulled the trigger. Instantly, a blindingly bright lance of light speared across to the target and burned an eight inch diameter hole completely through the center of its armored chest. Before the Reagan terminator had even begun to collapse, John rotated his aim two degrees to the left and shot Ulysses S. Grant through the chest. As he moved his aim on to Woodrow Wilson, he briefly wondered what the middle initial S. in Grant's name stood for.

With a weapon that worked at nearly the speed of light, John didn't even have to 'lead' the few moving targets and found hitting the dead presidents wasn't much harder than practicing at the gun range against stationary targets. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. The terminators were destroyed almost as fast as he could pull the trigger. Carefully counting his shots, he used the last two to destroy the doorway by which they had all exited the underground facility in hopes of stalling any reinforcements.

Then he was on his feet, sprinting between the still spinning teacups on his way to a new firing position over by the Storybook Canal boat ride, in the general direction of the 'It's a Small World' attraction where he had last seen his Mom and Reese headed, as well as the direction of the employee parking lot where they had left Sarah's Jeep.

Once he cleared the teacup ride, he glanced over his shoulder as he ran. His eight shots had taken down all of the Presidents that had been standing, but he didn't know how many of the others had been destroyed in the two explosions and how many had just taken cover. Now he saw several climbing to their feet, but Cameron under the cover of his fire had worked her way closer and now she was amongst them and lit up her lightsaber.

John started counting the seconds the charge in her lightsaber would last as he ran and fitted the next cartridge into his plasma rifle. He knew he had to be in position to cover Cam if there were any remaining active terminators when her lightsaber burned out. She would be vulnerable while changing its power cartridge.

As he had by the teacup ride, John intended to find a position behind the barricade fence that kept the crowd back while they waited their turn for the ride. However as he raced up trying to remember to dodge back and forth to throw off any shots in his direction, he spotted a small brown-haired boy wearing Mickey Mouse ears and just standing out in the open looking lost. Without a second thought, he altered his course enough to grab up the kid with his left arm before covering the last ten feet. Swinging through the opening in the barrier, he found a bunch of other people were already sheltered there including a frantic woman who had to be the boy's mother.

The woman grabbed the boy and pulled him into her arms while repeatedly whispering 'Thank you, thank you, thank you,' in John's direction. However the boy twisted around in her arms and continued to stare with wide eyes at the large chrome-plated weapon in John's hands.

"Hey, mister," began the kid with a hint of awe in his voice. "Is that a ray-gun?"

By John's count Cameron's lightsaber would burn out in twelve more seconds. He hit the pre-start button on the plasma rifle before glancing down at the little boy.

"Nah, it's just a prop gun. Didn't you hear we are shooting a movie here today? It is a remake of 'Space Angels'."

The kid stared blankly at the 'Space Angels' reference. It was the first thing that had popped into John's head since he had just seen its premiere only hours before. But then he reminded himself that that had been thirty-seven years ago and the movie had been a flop. There was no reason this kid would have ever heard of it. Still John felt a little disappointed at the complete lack of recognition.

"The movie is all about these alien robots attacking the Earth. But they are not too smart so they all try to look like famous presidents and they don't seem to understand that all these people are dead and therefore they stick out like sore thumbs."

Realizing a lot of kids, as well as a few adults, were listening with rapt attention, John asked. "So who wants to be in the movie?"

A lot of kids began saying 'me, me, me' while others nodded their heads.

"Okay," answered John making a shushing motion. "For this scene, we need everyone to play dead. Please lay down right where you are and try not to move until the director yells 'Cut'. Can you do that?"

A few kids nodded while the majority of them immediately started playing dead. He received silently mouthed 'thank you's' from parents who realized the true seriousness of the situation and knew this game would keep the children safer than the actual truth.

John's mental count reached zero and he turned his attention towards Cameron just in time to watch her lightsaber flicker and die, as she was slicing through the head of one of the terminators lying on the ground. She took a quick glance around and then gave the hand signal indicating all was clear. Then even as she fitted a new power cartridge into her lightsaber, she was already sprinting off in the direction Sarah and Reese had taken.

John remained where he was - ready to provide covering fire if any of the terminators weren't truly out of commission or if any more appeared from the shattered doorway. He also tried to simultaneously scan all around. It was almost a given that Skynet had multiple paths out of the subterranean facility and new threats could pop up from almost anywhere.

The whole twenty-four second life of his second power cartridge expired without his firing a shot. Quickly, he ejected the cartridge and fitted in a third, but then he hesitated. He didn't have an unlimited supply of cartridges and they might desperately be needed later. On the other hand, with its twelve second started up requirement, if he waited, it might be too late. If only the weapon had an 'instant on' feature, he thought wistfully. But beggars can't be choosers, and it did put down terminators with a single shot, which normal handguns and rifles couldn't do.

Deciding he better save his cartridges for now, he used the rifle's sling to hang it from his neck and shoulders so that his left hand could quickly reach the pre-start button while he reached back with his right hand and pulled his Glock from where he had tucked it into the back of his pants.

He was just starting to rise to his feet when a whispered female voice asked, "Is it over? Is it safe now?"

Crouching back down so his eyes just cleared the barrier, he glanced briefly over at the woman whose son he had rescued and then returned his attention to scanning for any suspicious activity before answering.

"It isn't over, but the lull may last long enough to get clear of here. They are after me and my friends over by 'It's a Small World'. Most of the danger will be in that direction. If you head down towards Main Street and the main parking lot you should be in the clear. However if you do run into any Presidents or anyone else with weapons, drop to the ground and they will probably ignore you."

As he finished speaking, John glanced at the woman. She was nodding her head and from the expression on her face, it was like she was looking at John as though he was some movie hero. And glancing passed her, he saw similar expressions of gratitude on others as well and John realized it felt good helping people and maybe, just maybe, he could someday become the hero he was destined to be.

But then John remembered the current situation and knew this wasn't the time to start getting delusions of grandeur. In a matter of hours this world was going to be destroyed and if they didn't make it to a time displacement device in time, he would be dead, regardless of his supposed destiny. And before they could start worrying about using a time machine, they still had to make it out of Disneyland. Abruptly, John mentally shifted from problems hours in the future and back to the present as he could feel the seconds ticking away before another group of terminators would surely make their appearance. And he had no idea how seriously Reese was hurt and how that would affect their ability to escape from Disneyland.

Therefore with just a curt nod in the woman's direction, John rose to a crouch, scrambled from behind the relative safety of the barrier, and dashed in the direction of the exit to the employee parking lot, which was located between 'It's a Small World' and Mickey's Toontown.

John hadn't gone more than forty feet when he heard the familiar woman's voice ring out from behind him, "Off to your left!"

Crouching lower, but still running, John looked to his left. He scanned the nearest boats of the canal ride but didn't see anything but tourists trying to hide behind the cowlings of the still moving boats. Then he scanned the artificial island formed by the looping canal, but again saw nothing. Finally, looking still further, he spotted the man's silhouette highlighted by the outline of a rifle high on the 'Dumbo, the Flying Elephant' ride. As one part of his mind flashed back to Cam's comment about the 'Dumbo' movie having a profound effect on her, the rest of his mind decided he hadn't yet been spotted. However to blend in better with the people still running in a panic away from the Matterhorn area, he actually straightened up from his crouch while twisting his body as much as possible to shield the plasma rifle from the other man's view.

Veering a little further to the left then he really wanted, John caught up with a group of teens. "That way," he said pointing more in the direction of the employee parking lot exit. Almost as one, the group of a dozen kids turned and ran towards the exit.

In no more than fifteen seconds, the group of kids slammed through a camouflaged door with a discreet 'Cast Members Only' sign and found themselves on a narrow street with low buildings on each side. John knew these buildings contained the changing rooms where they had 'borrowed' their costumes, as well as spaces for other necessary support functions for the employees like break rooms, training rooms, even an on-site nursery for crew members with small children. But at the moment John was only interested in reaching the parking lot where they had left his Mom's car. And better still, he could finally see the other three easy-to-spot members of his team. His Mom had ditched the blood stained white mink coat and her black and white wig, but Cameron was still in her gold gown. And it was impossible to miss how the petite looking princess was inexplicably carrying a large pirate in a fireman's hold as she ran.

"That's the way out," said John indicating where Cameron and the others were just disappearing around a corner. As he had hoped, the teenagers around him continued to follow his lead and he was able to maintain his illusion of anonymity for a little longer.

It didn't take more than twenty seconds for the teenagers to pound down the street, around the corner, and reach the sprawling employee parking lot. John's eyes immediately sprang to Sarah's Jeep parked four rows away. He could see the back hatch was open and the women were in the process of lowering Reese inside. Then before heading in their direction, John scanned the rest of the parking lot. Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. A scattering of people were moving towards their cars and others were heading in the direction of the entrance, but apparently the events near the Matterhorn were far enough away that they hadn't yet filtered out here.

"Thanks, guys," John said with a wave to the teenagers who had been his escort and who were beginning to mill aimlessly about. He hoped he hadn't put them into too much danger by leading them out into this parking lot.

John jogged the rest of the way to the Jeep. When he reached the car he discovered they had folded the backseat down and were using the added space to allow Reese to stretch out almost flat on his back. Sarah was in the back with him holding a makeshift bandage to his lower abdomen. Cameron was busy moving the extra weaponry which had been stowed in the back of the Jeep up to the front passenger footwell.

"How is he?" John asked his Mother.

"Not good," answered Sarah while shaking her head. "He's losing a lot of blood and I am not certain, but the bullet probably hit some internal organs. We have to get him to a hospital."

"No," said Reese through gritted teeth. "There isn't time. If we go to a hospital, we will all end up dead. We have to get to the time machine. You can take me to a hospital once we are downtime."

John looked at Reese and didn't like what he saw. He really wondered if Reese could survive the stresses of time displacement in his current condition. But he also knew Reese was right. If they showed up at a hospital now with Reese's obvious gunshot wound, they would be caught up in a world of paperwork with either the cops or worse, with Skynet's minions. They could just drop Reese off at the emergency room entrance and then speed away, but with Judgment Day arriving in mere hours or perhaps minutes, that would be a death sentence for the older man.

"He's right, Mom. We don't have time for a hospital; we are going to have to take our chances with the time machine."

Sarah looked John in the eye for a moment and then slowly nodded. She understood the dangers as well as he did.

"Did you get the antimatter?" John asked.

Sarah nodded again and pointed with her chin towards an innocuous silver can wedged into place between her and the aft right wheel well. And then without saying anything more she turned her full attention back to Reese.

John couldn't help but stare at the little package with the explosive capability of a nuclear bomb. As he stared at it, he remembered how Cameron had said that only an instant's failure of its magnetic fields would be catastrophic and his Mom had been lugging it around while in a gun battle with terminators. An involuntary shudder ran down his spine.

"John," said Cameron breaking his reverie. "We have to go now. Every second we stay here increases the odds of getting caught. You drive."

John just looked at her for a moment taking in her appearance. This was the closest he had been to her since the events back by the Matterhorn and what he saw was a vision soaked in blood. Her bare right shoulder and most of the front of her strapless gown was stained a bright red from carrying the wounded Reese.

But before John had a chance to become fully lost in his thoughts about Cameron, she turned and ran around the right side of the Jeep towards the passenger door and he was forced to follow suit and move to the driver's side. Then as he hurried forward, Cameron's words fully sank in. They HAD been exceedingly lucky to have only run into the one group of terminators right here in Skynet's backyard. They needed to go before their luck failed.

John backed out of the parking space and then gunned the Jeep towards the parking lot exit. Immediately he heard a sharp groan from Reese and regretted his incautious acceleration. And more than just not wanting to further aggravate Reese's wound, he realized he needed to remain as low profile as possible, at least until they cleared this parking lot.

Reaching the end of the row in which they were parked, he made a slow gentle turn into the lane leading to the exit. But whether it was his jackrabbit start or some unnoticed surveillance cameras, they had obviously been spotted. Two guards with automatic weapons slung from their shoulders were busily lowering a barricade fence across the exit lanes.

"Don't slow down," said Cameron.

John glanced over and saw her hit the down button for her window and then she reached down by her feet for another of the M72 LAW rocket launchers. She slid the launcher out the window before leaning out herself to extend the tube and arm the weapon.

As she leaned out, her large hoop skirt popped up, almost completely obscuring John's view forward. Fighting it back down with his right hand while steering with his left, John wondered why she hadn't found a moment during their escape to get rid of the damn thing.

Once he had cleared his view, John discovered the two guards must have spotted them as they were both in the process of raising their weapons to their shoulders. Hoping it wouldn't screw up Cam's aim, John mashed the accelerator to the floor.

The Jeep with its powerful hemi engine seemed to leap forward. And in almost the same instant, Cameron fired her rocket. Trailing a vivid white streamer of smoke, the rocket flew straight as an arrow towards its target. John figured Cameron would have targeted one of the guards, but the rocket shot straight passed them and scored a direct hit on the leftmost support of the barricade fence. The impact resulted in a large ball of flame as the barricade was torn loose and went spinning end over end until it ground to a halt over fifty feet away. And as their car raced forward, John realized the explosion had knocked the pair of guards to the ground. They were just beginning to crawl back to their feet as the Jeep shot through the exit.

"Left . . . Left . . . Left," shouted Cameron, as they went careening out into the moderately heavy traffic on West Ball Road.

John wove between two cars as he fought the wheel in an attempt to follow Cameron's directions. All the while he mentally waited for one of the tires to blow at the most inopportune moment. Fortunately, they appeared to have made it through all the metallic debris from the rocket's explosion without picking up a piece that proved to be lethal for any of the tires. Once they were safely in a west-bound lane without experiencing a blow-out or a collision, John's heart rate began to drop.

"Why go left?" asked John, as he glanced back in the rear view mirror at his Mom and saw she was just getting up from where she had ended up sprawled across Reese's body due to the violent maneuver. "The freeway was to the right."

"We can't risk the freeway now," answered Cam while her eyes never paused in their scanning for potential danger. "It would be too easy to be boxed in. On surface streets there are many possible routes and Skynet can't cover all of them. Plus we need to ditch this car; they have to have recorded it with surveillance cameras. A mile up this street, we will enter a small industrial area. We should be able to find something we can use in one of the parking lots."

John had slowed enough to blend in with traffic and was just checking the rear view mirror again to assess Reese's status when he caught a flicker through the glass rear hatch and realized the remaining few blocks to the industrial district were going to be too far. They wouldn't have time to pause to change cars without being seen.

Seeing the signal three cars ahead turning from yellow to red, John swung into the unoccupied left turn lane and floored the accelerator.

"They have found us," John exclaimed just before he laid on the horn to warn the cross-traffic that he was coming through the intersection – red light or no red light.

Cameron and Sarah turned to look out the Jeep's rear window after having seen John's gaze into the rearview mirror. What the they saw weaving through the slow moving traffic behind them were five, no six green 1968 Mustang GT Fastbacks. John wasn't particularly a car nut, but even he recognized they were the car Steve McQueen had been driving in 'Bullitt'. In the movie McQueen's character had been chasing a devilishly fast-looking black Dodge Charger and after a long and arduous chase had run it to ground. Well, their Jeep was no Dodge Charger and they had six, not one, Mustangs on their tail. 'Wonderful,' thought John, as he slammed on the brakes for precisely two seconds halfway through the intersection to avoid clipping the rear fender of a yellow Volkswagen Bug. 'Simply wonderful.'

Cameron grabbed one of their two remaining rocket launchers and leaned out of her still open window. John tried to hold a steady course to maximize her chances of success, although he wasn't certain how they were going to stop six pursuers with only two rockets. The plasma rifle would do the trick, but he hoped Cam wouldn't have to make that level of sacrifice.

John expected her to shoot the moment she had the lead car in her sights, but she just stayed there, half out the window. They traveled two more blocks and were rapidly approaching another red light. The left turn lane wasn't free this time and John was contemplating jumping the curb up onto the sidewalk when Cameron finally fired. John saw the smoke trail in the rearview mirror, but at the speed the Jeep was traveling he had to focus on his driving and there wasn't any alternative but using the sidewalk. The Jeep jumped the curb with two bone jarring thumps and another scary groan from Reese.

John was laying on the horn to clear the five pedestrians from the sidewalk between him and the next intersection when the rocket exploded. The explosion was way more powerful than either of the two previous rockets that had been fired against the Kennedy terminator back by the Matterhorn or the gate across the parking lot exit. It was even more powerful than the C4 explosive Cameron had used. They were almost two hundred feet from the impact point, yet the blast wave picked up the heavily loaded Jeep and tossed in against the side of the furniture store they were passing. Simultaneously, every window in the Jeep, every window in the furniture store, and every window in every nearby cars shattered by the overpressure.

"What the hell was that?" shouted John to be heard over the combined on-going explosion and the ringing in his ears. As he waited for a response, he fought to keep the Jeep in a straight line as it bounced away from the brick and glass storefront. The Jeep was suddenly pulling hard to the left and John knew, at a minimum the right front wheel was severely bent. Now it was doubly imperative they dump this vehicle as not only did Skynet have it identified, but also because its remaining useful lifespan could probably be measured in blocks rather than years.

"Take the next right," yelled Cameron as she slid back into her seat. She gestured with her hand to be sure John understood.

John glanced at her briefly as the car approached the corner. The hair on the back of her head was thick with glass from where she had hit one of the large glass windows on the storefront during the explosion. John could see the scary red tinge of blood mixed in. Quickly he took a second look at her face, but only saw a couple small scratches weeping a little blood. It was lucky she had been facing backwards, he thought, as he turned his full attention back to his driving.

Reaching the corner, John held his course using the handicapped access curb to reenter the street without the jarring impact they had experience on first entering the sidewalk. Then he jerked the wheel hard to the right while pushing the accelerator to force a four-wheel drift to make the turn. He managed to stop the drift at just the right point so the car was pointed in the desired direction and it accelerated down the street. For a moment he wondered how many other sixteen-year-old drivers could have managed the maneuver. But then most of the other kids his age probably didn't have mothers who insisted they pass a security driving school intended for anti-terrorism and executive protection drivers before they were allowed to take their first driving test.

"What the hell was that?" John repeated as he raced down the street.

"A gas tanker truck, it entered the intersection from the cross-street just behind us," answered Cameron.

"My god," said John glancing over at Cameron, but she didn't meet his eye as she continued to scan ahead of them with a calm expression on her face. "That explosion must have killed the driver and probably a whole lot of others."

"I estimate fourteen immediate fatalities and approximately six more with mortal wounds."

"How could you do that?" sputtered John.

"It's Judgment Day; they were all going to be dead shortly anyway. And it was the only viable way to block all the pursuit vehicles."

Anyone else would have heard only a cold dispassionate response, but John knew her better than that. He could hear from the quiet undertone that Cam was trying to justify her action to herself as much as to him.

John was trying to think how to respond Cameron's statement when his thoughts were interrupted by a shouted 'through that garage door' and Cam's finger pointing to a building half a block ahead on their right.

Quickly John realized she was pointing at the door into the service bay of a Dodge dealership. As he slowed to make the turn into its driveway, Cam told him to slow just inside the door so she could get out to lower the large overhead door and then further explained how he needed to pull far enough in so the Jeep wouldn't be easily visible through the building's windows.

John nodded as he watched her 'weapon up' and he wondered how many more innocent bystanders she, and maybe he, would have to kill before this day was over.

Just as the Jeep entered the service building, John tapped the brakes hard and Cameron dove from the vehicle with a Glock in one hand and her lightsaber in the other. As John pulled the Jeep forward into an empty service bay between a gray Chrysler minivan and a white Dodge Neon, Cameron hit the large 'down' button on the control panel beside the overhead door.

John turned off the Jeep, automatically pulling the key from the ignition. He knew there were things he needed to be doing, but for a moment he just sat there in the driver's seat. He had been running on fear and adrenaline for too many hours and all at once events wanted to catch up with him. His body ached all over from the numerous near-miss explosions and all the running and diving and rolling he had been forced to do. He desperately wanted to sag forward and simply rest his forehead against the steering wheel for a minute. But instead he merely closed his eyes and repeated one of the mantras Cam had long ago taught him during their first sojourn in the year 2008.

At the time, life had seemed so scary with Cromartie on their trail and a scattering of other terminators crossing their path, but it had also been the best time of his life with his new-found connection to Cameron. They had spent hours and hours talking about everything and nothing. Cameron had been using the hours he needed for sleep in pursuit of the concepts of religion and the human soul. She had taught him meditation techniques in exchange for his insights on the meaning of life.

As he sat there in the Jeep with his eyes closed and his hands resting lightly on the steering wheel, John tried to recapture one of those moments. He remembered how they had sat cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom and how he had been able to empty his mind and almost get it to float free of his body. But in the twenty seconds he could spare, repeating the experience seemed utterly impossible. There was simply too much pressing down on his mind. The planet was over-run with Skynet's minions. Judgment Day was today and the nuclear death of billions was barely minutes away. And perhaps hardest of all was the loss of his former relationship with Cameron. In that particular area he was still groping around trying to figure out how to regain what he once had had. For once upon a time, Cameron would have simply sensed that what he really needed right now more than anything was simply a hug.

Shaking his head, John knew there was nothing he could do at this moment but soldier on. Resolutely he opened his eyes and climbed out of the Jeep. There was work he needed do if he was going to fulfill his destiny of being the savior of the human race.

____

Part Five

HE'S YOUR UNCLE.

The words seemed to repeat over and over in John's head. He should have realized it back at the house the moment the older man had stated his name was Reese. But the revelation that today was Judgment Day had followed so rapidly on its heels; he hadn't really given it another thought.

Now he couldn't seem to do anything but stare at where his Mother leaned over the barely conscious form of Reese, no, of his uncle Derek. He knew his Mother had made the abrupt pronouncement to emphasize her urgent desire to get them moving towards the time machine so they could get the man the serious medical attention he needed. But the shock of her statement was having the opposite effect on him. As he tried to get his head around the concept this man was the brother of the father he had never known, he found himself wondering how long his mother had known the truth. Had she known since the first moment she had seen him? Or had she found out during the nearly two hours they had been separated back at Disneyland?

John finally dragged his eyes away from his Mother and his new-found uncle and looked over to where Cameron stood guard over the mechanics and the others who had been in the service area when they had made their abrupt arrival. And as he looked in her direction he remembered how both Reese and she had recognized each other. If she knew who Reese was, she must have known of his relationship to John. So why hadn't she said anything? There had been more than a hint of enmity between the two of them. Was that the reason? But whatever her history was with Reese, it shouldn't have prevented her from telling him the truth, John thought.

However, John realized, explanations could wait for later. The important thing now was to get to the time machine and move downtime to where they could safely get Derek to a hospital.

"Cameron," began John, putting a little bit of steel in his voice, although more to keep himself focused than because he thought it would have any effect on her. "We need to move now. We have already pushed our luck staying here for forty-five minutes. At some point another customer is going to show up who will already be talking on their cell and get a warning out before we can get the phone away from them."

Cameron's eyes glanced at him for no more than three seconds, but the gun she held pointed at their hostages never wavered.

"We need to give Skynet enough time to spread its net over such a wide area that we can slip through the cracks," she said, repeating the same refrain she had been using to counter Sarah's arguments for the last thirty minutes.

"Or perhaps we are just giving it enough time to gather sufficient forces to do a building-by-building search," said John shaking his head. "There is going to come a point where we will have waited here too long and I think we are already passed it."

Cameron appeared to ponder this for what seemed like a very long time for her. At least ten seconds by John's estimate. Finally, she nodded. Then, almost in the same motion, she pulled back the hammer on her Glock and it gave off the raspy clicking sound everyone was familiar with from literally thousands of TV shows.

"What are you doing?" John quickly asked. After the way she had calmly destroyed the tanker truck and ended countless lives to get them clear of the pursuing Skynet forces, he was afraid she was going to use the same logic to justify terminating the nearly dozen people they were currently holding hostage. Was it as simple as believing it made no difference with the rapidly approaching Judgment Day event? Or was there something wrong with her? For surely the Cameron he knew wouldn't condone killing people just to make things easier. Had something happened to her mind or her underlying programming as a result of her jacking into the computer system back at Disneyland? "You don't need to kill them. We have already destroyed their cells and taken out the building's phone system. It isn't necessary."

Cameron glanced at him with an expression on her face that said she had no idea what was going through his mind. "What are you talking about? I am just going to lock them in the storeroom."

John let out a sigh of relief, but still wondered why she had felt it was necessary to cock the weapon. For, after the impromptu striptease all the way down to her panties she had performed in front of these men while trading her blood encrusted golden gown for a pair of gray mechanic's coveralls, she must have known she had them eating out of her hand.

As Cameron directed the men into the storeroom and then pushed a heavy rack of equipment in front of it to block the door, John walked over to the gray minivan and climbed into the driver's seat. They had already pulled the backseats out of the minivan, which had merely been in the shop for a routine oil change, and loaded Derek on board. Now John fired up the engine and moved the vehicle over to the large overhead door. By the time he was in position, Cameron had finished securing the hostages and had made her way to the door, too. After hitting the door opening button, she climbed into the front passenger seat.

Easing the accelerator down as smoothly as possible, John guided the minivan from the relative gloom of the building into the bright, hazy light of L.A.'s afternoon sun. Seeing how far the sun was from the zenith merely reinforced how little time they had left to make their escape. According to what Derek had said back at the house, in less than two and one half hours the destruction of this world would begin. Of course, with the way Derek looked now, they were under an even tighter time constraint if they were going to save his life.

John couldn't help a quick glance around as they cleared the building, but nothing was obviously out of place. After passing a long double row of full-sized Dodge pickups festooned with balloons and streamers proclaiming a year-end model sale, the minivan reached the exit from the lot. Pausing briefly for some traffic, John turned south to get them back to Ball Road. It would lead them west to the nearest unused time displacement machine, located in Long Beach, as there was no longer time to get to a more isolated one like the one they had used in Twenty-nine Palms.

They proceeded west on Ball Road. After five minutes John hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary – no police roadblocks, no mysterious green Mustangs. If there was anything at all different, it had to be the lightness of the traffic. Schools should already be done for the day and the afternoon rush hour should be getting into full swing, yet traffic felt more like what you would expect on a major holiday. John suspected it was another symptom that people consciously or subconsciously knew something was going to happen, in much the same way the outbound roads had been jammed up in the morning and the unnaturally worried expressions on many of the adult faces at Disneyland had been other symptoms.

An unusually loud moan pulled John's eyes to the rearview mirror and the view of his Mother once again crouched beside Derek. During the couple of seconds John watched before turning his attention back to the road, he saw Derek roll his head from side-to-side and then he reached up to brush away the cooling compress Sarah had been holding against his forehead with one hand while her other maintained pressure on his wound.

"How's he doing?" John called back towards his Mother.

"Not well," was her response. "I think he is slipping towards unconsciousness."

So John was almost startled when a minute later, Derek called out with a surprisingly firm voice, "H-Ks. I see H-Ks. We have to get to cover."

H-Ks. John knew Derek had to be referring to Skynet's Hunter-Killer aircraft that were part of the arsenal of weapons Skynet would bring to bear during the final days of its battle to exterminate the human race. However while they were an everyday threat in the future world from which Derek had traveled, they couldn't be here.

John had almost decided Derek was becoming delirious from blood loss when suddenly Cameron pointed off to the south. "He's right. There are H-Ks here."

Looking in the direction she was pointing, it only took John a second to spot them, too. Like an angry swarm of hornets, a virtual cloud of the machines were taking to the air. John didn't have time to count them, but there had to be at least fifty. Obviously, Skynet's giant lunar facility was cranking out more than just terminators. This batch seemed to be taking to the air from a spot about a mile south of their current position. With barely a conscious thought, John brought up the mental image of the area his mother had forced him to memorize. They had to be coming from the old Los Alamitos Army Airfield, he decided.

John carefully studied them as they spread in a 360 degree pattern from their launch site. They were different from any aircraft he had ever heard of, although they might be classified as cousins to the Marines' V-22. They had a similar looking fuselage with space for ten to fifteen men or terminators. However while the V-22 had a pair of large helicopter style blades located on either side of the fuselage, these H-Ks had somewhat smaller ducted fans in comparable locations. As the pair heading in their direction got closer, John could finally see the large swivel mounted gun slung below where the cockpit would be located, assuming the craft even needed a cockpit and wasn't fully automated or remotely controlled by Skynet.

John forced his eyes away from the H-Ks and back to the road; this wasn't the time to draw attention to themselves by getting in an accident. However while his eyes were on the road, his mind was still distracted by what he had just seen and the memories it brought forth. For he was suddenly reminded of the audio cassettes his mother had recorded shortly after her first encounter with a terminator and the resulting death of his father. John hadn't even been born yet, but Sarah had wanted to get everything Kyle had told her down before she forgot some important detail. Shortly after the encounter with the T-850 and T-1000 was when she had finally decided he was old enough and had given him the twelve tapes filled with seventeen hours of her thoughts and recollections. At the time she had joked how the tapes were almost longer than the total time she had known his father.

John had listened to the tapes more times over the past five years than he cared to admit. They had included a lot of 'free-stream' rambling thoughts by Sarah as she had been forced to cope with her pregnancy and with the loss in a single day of everyone she cared about - Kyle, her mother, even her best friend and roommate, Ginger. But what had always sent a chill down John's spine were her recollections of what Kyle had told her about the world he had come from. Filled with near nuclear winter bleakness, his world had been a dark and scary place. It had been an endless struggle to survive against the marauding terminators, H-Ks, and other Skynet attack units. And that didn't even include the equally difficult struggle to locate the basic necessities like food and water. John once again wondered how humanity had survived under the conditions his mother described in the tapes. And he also wondered where he would find the strength, the knowledge, the courage, and the wisdom to lead mankind through that terrifying existence. But then he reminded himself that everything they were doing now was to prevent Skynet's vision of the future from ever occurring. However with Judgment Day barely two hours away and this version of the world already overrun with terminators and H-Ks, it was getting easier to envision Skynet once again winning the preliminary rounds.

Forcing his thoughts away from the gloom and doom of the world of his father, John tried to concentrate on his driving.

"How much further?" John asked Cam, as she toyed with their single remaining rocket launcher. He hoped the weapon in her hands wouldn't become necessary. First, he didn't know if it would have sufficient punch to take down an armored H-K. And second, even if it did, the bright white smoke trail it left would be like a neon arrow pointing directly at their position.

"Four point seven miles," Cameron answered. "Stay on Ball until it changes into East Wardlow Road. Then keep going straight until the road tees. Turn south on Lakewood Boulevard. Stay on Lakewood until we pass under the 405 and then turn right on East Willow Street. After six blocks turn right on Junipero Avenue and it will be in the third building on the right."

John nodded as he kept most of his attention focused on his driving. He wished he knew the locations of all the time machines for emergencies like this, but apparently his future self hadn't thought that was prudent. So Cameron knew where some of them were located. And she had told both Sarah and him where to find hidden instructions for the locations of others. This way in a true emergency they each would have their own fallback route if one or both of the others was lost or compromised. Sometimes it felt almost like they were the bad guys with all the secret codes, need-to-know restrictions, and blind cell rigmarole.

They drove on in a silence seemingly only broken when a pair of the H-Ks would go screaming by; their ducted fans roaring at least fifty decibels louder than any other sound on the quiet streets.

After what felt like an eternity to John, but in reality couldn't have been more than ten minutes, they arrived at their destination. John slowed the minivan to a crawl as he read the sign on the front of the building, 'Long Beach Uniform Co. Inc.'.

"Pull around back," directed Cameron. "There is supposed to be another entrance. Just inside the rear of the building is a storage area with a walled off section accessed via a secret entrance. Assuming nothing has been disturbed, we should be able to have the time displacement equipment set up and ready for use in twelve minutes."

John nodded as he pulled the minivan off the street and drove through the small parking area along the side of the building. There were a smattering of cars in the lot and John couldn't suppress a twinge of concern. On all their previous passages via the time displacement generator, they had always been alone or hidden in the darkest part of the night. However this time there were obviously going to be people in the very same building and it was effectively the middle of the day. He just had to hope no one would stumble across them before they were ready to make their escape.

Cameron jumped out of the front seat almost before the minivan had stopped moving. Immediately she grabbed the sliding door on her side of the van and jerked it open.

"John, make sure things are clear inside," she said as she helped Sarah lift Reese out of the van.

John grabbed his Glock from the console between the front seats and scrambled out. He ran over to the building's back door trying to decide what to do if it was locked. Shooting out the lock would make a lot of noise, but his lock picks would take a lot longer. And suddenly he had this strong feeling time was running out much faster than what they had thought. He wasn't certain what it was, whether Skynet was about to locate them or something else, but he just 'knew' they had to hurry.

Luckily, when he grabbed the door knob it rotated freely. Grasping his Glock more firmly, he opened the door and stepped inside.

Compared to the bright light outside, the room felt as dark as night, even though several overhead lights were on. As John waited for his eyes to adjust, he started scanning the room for a wall likely to hide the time machine room. It was immediately obvious it had to be to his right as the left side of the room extended to the exterior wall.

Moving towards the right wall to search for the secret entrance, John walked passed rack after rack filled with uniforms. Nurse's uniforms, maid's uniforms, waiter's uniforms, and every other type of uniform seemed to be available in abundance. For a moment he was tempted to grab a couple of police uniforms, as you never knew when one might come in handy. But then he shook his head as he remembered it was impossible to take clothing through the time machine.

John reached the wall that had to hide the secret room and started scanning for the secret entrance. It had to be well concealed if the time machine had been here since 1963 without being discovered. Of course, someone from the resistance may well have been in control of this building the entire time, which would have reduced the level of security needed. But still it had to be concealed sufficiently to prevent an accidental discovery by a lowly employee or an infrequent visitor.

He was still looking when he heard the approach of the two women with their heavy burden. Perhaps the information on how to open the secret entrance had been part of the information package Cameron had received on this facility. If they couldn't find and open the door in a timely manner, there was always the brute force approach. However ripping down walls would probably cause someone to investigate before they would have time to make their departure. A quiet approach was definitely the preferred solution.

"It has to be here somewhere," whispered John when Cameron and Sarah reached him. "But I can't find it."

"Take him," answered Cameron lifting Reese's right arm from where it was stretched across her shoulders.

John slipped into place as Cameron moved over to the target wall. John took a moment to glance at Derek. The older man looked terrible. His eyes weren't quite closed, but his head lolled forward and his breathing was reduced to shallow, wheezy gasps. The strips of white cloth Sarah had wound around his torso to bind his wound closed were soaked through with fresh dark red blood.

Turning his attention back to Cameron, he watched as she slowly scanned the wall. After about five seconds she moved about fifteen feet to their right and started moving several large open boxes filled with Los Angeles County Firefighter's shirts. When he felt his mother start to move in that direction, John shifted to get a firmer grip on Derek and then he started to move also.

"Have you founded it?" asked John quietly.

"Yes, it's right there," said Cameron waving her hand at one particular spot on the wall before she bent to remove the last box.

John looked at the indicated spot, which to his eyes didn't look any different than any other location on the forty foot long wall. "How can you tell?"

"I can see it," was Cam's immediate response. When she saw him raise an eyebrow, she expanded. "With my radar I can see the outline of the door's surrounding structure. I can also see a buried steel rod extending over to that fire extinguisher enclosure, which has a ninety-four percent probability of being the release mechanism."

As she finished speaking, Cameron was already moving. After lifting out the fire extinguisher, she reached into the recessed receptacle and started running her hand along the side nearest to where she had indicated the door was located. After only a few seconds John heard a distinct 'click' and saw Cameron rotate a freshly exposed lever.

With a light tearing sound, John saw the hinged door, located eight feet to the left of where Cameron was standing, swing open with an inward motion, leaving a jagged edge of tape and paint from where its seam had been hidden for the last three and a half decades.

Quickly, John and Sarah began moving towards the doorway. All of the strength was now gone from Reese's legs and his feet mostly dragged limply behind them. Cameron beat them to the door and once the others were through, she pushed it closed behind them.

They found themselves in a surprisingly large room, roughly fifteen by thirty feet. Both ends were filled with racks of equipment similar to the configuration they had seen at other time displacement facilities, but that was hardly surprising considering they all came off the same assembly line. The center of the room, where the time displacement bubble would form, was mostly clear space. A row of old fashioned light bulbs hung from the ceiling on bare electrical wires, but at the moment they weren't needed as the room was well lit by a row of windows high on the northern exterior wall.

John and Sarah carefully lowered Reese to the floor slightly off to one side of the cleared space while Cameron immediately set about powering up the equipment. Once Sarah's hands were free, she pulled off the backpack which had been slung from one shoulder. Reaching in, she pulled out the silver canister containing the anti-matter with exaggerated caution that seemed almost over done after the risks she had taken with it during the battle with the terminators back at Disneyland.

Reese's eyes, which had been mostly closed while they had moved him from the van, were now open and focused on the canister. After a few seconds he began to speak in a voice with only a fraction of the strength he had projected during their first encounter back at the house less than nine hours earlier.

"Well, since I am the one who already has a large hole in his body, I guess I am elected to carry the anti-matter through the time machine."

John watched as Sarah looked down at the canister she still held in her hands. Almost immediately she began to shake her head. John found himself agreeing with her, no way could the already greatly weakened Reese survive having his wound opened up enough to force the tennis ball tube-sized container inside.

Reese must have read the expression on Sarah and John's faces. With an incredible show of will-power he managed to leverage his upper body up on one elbow. Then with an obviously forced nonchalant expression on his face, he asked. "Did you hear the joke about the pirate captain?"

John couldn't keep a look of surprise from crossing his features at this unexpected non sequitur from Derek.

"The captain was standing near the wheel on the aft deck of his ship with his first officer and the helmsman. The first officer turned to the captain and asked," and here Derek was forced to pause for a moment as a shudder ran through his body and the tendons in his neck all stood out as he grimaced in pain. "And asked, 'Captain, why do you always put on a red shirt before we go into battle?'"

And once again Derek was forced to pause, this time by a coughing spasm that seemed to last at least twenty seconds. By the time the man had his body once more under control John could see fresh blood oozing from his bandages. John willed him to lay back and rest, but Reese forced himself on.

"The captain looked at his first officer for a moment before answering. 'It is in case I get wounded. I don't want the crew to see me bleeding and become disheartened.'"

Derek's voice was falling towards a whisper as he continued. "Just then the lookout in the crow's nest called down, 'Three British Men Of War closing on the port bow.' The first officer and the helmsman turned and looked expectantly at the captain."

Once again Derek was forced to pause for a coughing fit and by the time it passed, John could see blood on the older man's lips.

"The captain kept them waiting for a few seconds before saying, 'Please ask the steward to bring me my brown pants.'"

John stared at Derek as he slumped down to the floor. John got the joke but didn't feel the slightest urge to laugh. If Derek's intention had been to show he was in good enough shape to tell a lame joke and therefore in good enough shape to survive having the canister inserted into his body, it hadn't worked. No, all it had done was use up the last of the man's remaining strength.

"Hurry," said Derek before coughing up more blood. "There isn't much time left."

Then he must have realized it was too late. Much of the tension abruptly went out of his body and he looked up at Sarah.

"Kyle really loved you," Derek said, as his voice seemed to fall almost below a whisper. "I never understood it, but now I do. And I think . . . I think I love you, too."

Then Derek's body spasmed one more time and his eyes fixed on Sarah's face as the light slowly faded from them.

Sarah had been kneeling close to Derek on the opposite side from John so she could be close enough to hear his words. Now she pulled his upper body up from the floor and held his face against her breast as she rocked slowly and the tears ran down her face.

John stared in shock as he felt tears welling up in his own eyes. He had seen an inordinate amount of death and destruction in his life, but this was the first time he had lost someone close and personal since, well, since they had lowered the T-850 into the vat of molten steel. He hadn't known Derek nearly as long as he had known the old terminator, but Derek was family. And as he looked at Derek's body in his mother's arms and once again took in the ruined pirate's costume and the heavy black mascara still ringing his dead eyes, he thought the man had deserved better than this. Oh, he had died from wounds received in battle against his eternal enemy, but he should have been allowed to survive long enough to fulfill his dying wish of carrying the anti-matter through the time machine.

He felt himself slipping towards the uncontrolled grief that was consuming his mother and Cameron's exclamation of 'It's starting,' almost didn't register.

As he tried to pull himself together, John's initial thought was that she was referring to the time displacement equipment. But then a brilliant flash of white light filled the room from the overhead windows and forced John to squeeze his eyes shut. Only a handful of seconds later, the building began to shake violently – far worse than from any earthquake John had ever experienced while living in California. Even after the shock of losing Derek less than a minute earlier, John knew, without a doubt, they had just experienced a nuclear event. They were supposed to have almost ninety more minutes, but obviously this timeline wasn't behaving exactly as Derek had remembered it.

"We have to go NOW!" shouted John to be heard. But at least for Cameron he needn't have bothered, she was already throwing the last few switches as fast as she could.

His mother was another story. She still knelt on the bucking floor slowly rocking Derek's body in her arms. John reached across Derek and dug the nails of his fingers into Sarah's exposed upper arms. "Mom, we have to go. Judgment Day is here."

She still made no effort to respond and with a silent apology to his uncle, he grabbed the front of his shirt and desperately jerked his body from his Mother's grip. Then without a pause, John returned his hands to her shoulders and began to bodily lift her to her feet. She resisted for a moment, but then she snapped out of her shocked state far enough to rise the rest of the way before pulling John into a tight hug.

John lifted his feet over Derek's body and then he shuffled forward to force his mother to the center of the cleared area. At almost the same moment Cameron came running up and John stretched out his left arm to pull her into a three-way embrace. Fiercely, John tightened his grip on the two most important women in his life.

As he felt the time displacement field beginning to take form around them, John briefly worried about the electrical power failing from the first nuclear blast before they were able to escape, but then he remembered the equipment had its own self-contained power supply based on the same technology which powered the lightsabers and the plasma rifles. Therefore as long as the room didn't take a direct hit or they didn't experience a shockwave which damaged some vital component, they should be okay.

The blue shimmering bubble was starting to become visible around them as John glanced back over his shoulder for one final look at his newly found and now lost uncle. Sitting on the floor beside him was the suddenly out of reach canister of anti-matter. Somehow they were going to have to figure out a way to destroy Skynet's lunar facility without it. Hopefully, the information Cameron had been able to glean from Skynet's Disneyland computer network would be enough.

Then as he continued to stare at his uncle's lifeless body, he wondered if going after the anti-matter had been the right decision. They were going to have to get by without it anyway and perhaps if they hadn't tried for it, Derek would still be alive. At the time it had seemed like the right decision and John knew it was too late to start second guessing now. Regardless of how much harder it seemed since it was his uncle, this wouldn't be the last time he would be forced to make a decision that might get someone killed. No, if history eventually played out like it had some many times before, he would be forced to send people to certain death over and over again. John felt something readjusting in his mind as the last vestiges of boyhood were stripped away from his heart and soul.

The three of them collapsed to their knees as the time displacement field intensified and its peculiar radiation began to directly affect their nerves, spinal columns, and brains, or the neural networks that passed for a brain in Cameron. John was barely conscious as the time bubble lost its translucency and moved towards the fully opaque state which occurred at transition. Derek's body was no longer visible through the shimmering blue wall of the bubble and it had to be less than a second from when the bubble would turn fully opaque when a blast of white light a thousand times brighter than the earlier event glared through the windows.

The excruciating pain in John's body suddenly felt a million times more intense than he had experienced in any previous transition, as the radiation of the time field battled for dominance against the radiation of the nuclear explosion from a nearly direct hit. John had no idea what the effect of the interaction of the two intense fields would be. Assuming they survived, they might come out of the encounter in who knew what time or place or alternate timeline.

But John didn't have more than a fraction of a second to think about it before the combined fields slammed him into unconsciousness. And as his mind slipped away, his last thought wasn't of his mother or his uncle or even Cameron. No, his last thought was of his daughter, Lisa.

End of Chapter 4

Author's Note – I just want to extend a special shout out to Carl S. He read a copy of this chapter on my 'work in progress' page when it was about half done and sent me an email complaining about some of my science in describing the terminators' power source. After exchanging several messages and doing some research, we came to a method that was more satisfactory to both of us. This required rewriting some of the dialog from when they were sitting around the kitchen table, but I think the end result is better than what I had originally done. So, thanks again, Carl.

Update – This story is continued in: 1963 Timeline 90210

Duane


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